Author:sammydogoodery-com
The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing was always going to be a bold experiment—an attempt to stitch back together a landscape long severed by the Ventura (101) Freeway. Now, as the project progresses, it has also become something else: a flashpoint. Critics have seized on rising costs and shifting timelines. Originally pegged at roughly $90 million to be paid for mainly by private sources, the price tag has climbed to more than $114 million—an increase driven by inflation, labor shortages and […]
As supporters of the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing in Agoura Hills gear up for an Earth Day celebration atop the bridge over the 101 Freeway on April 22—exactly four years since the official groundbreaking—the project has come under fire for delays and cost overruns. Some of the crossing’s backers say the surge of criticism online shows signs of a manufactured outrage campaign. The recent anti-bridge backlash was touched off by a March 18 opinion article in The California Post, the […]
Last week, the newly launched California Post ran an opinion piece headlined “California’s unfinished wildlife ‘bridge to nowhere’ tops $100M.” The authors, both with the conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute, dedicated roughly 750 words to attacking the Agoura Hills wildlife crossing northwest of Los Angeles for two key reasons: Costs are higher, and the completion date is later than initially estimated when the project was first announced five years ago. Read the rest here.
In 2024, the nonprofit National Wildfire Federation began its plan to build a bridge over the 101 freeway in Agoura Hills to help mountain lions and other wildlife facing “genetic isolation” caused by the freeway. The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing is expected to be finished this year, but already small creatures are making the bridge their home and greenery is taking over. “For so much of the construction of this crossing it’s been about concrete and rebar and very industrial elements. But […]
“She never left her cub,” said a Yosemite National Park ranger, heartbroken, after she witnessed a mother bear remain for hours with her lifeless baby who had been hit by a car on a park road in the summer of 2021. adly, dozens of bears are hit, and sometimes killed, on park roads each year. Vehicle strikes are now one of the leading causes of death for bears in Yosemite. The park has posted warning signs at hot spot collision areas, attempting to […]
For a mountain lion, the kindest intervention for a broken leg is often euthanasia. But the cub known as P-121 was getting a second chance. Found in a roadside ditch in the Simi Valley near Los Angeles, he was one of scores of California mountain lions struck by vehicles each year. At only about five months old, he should have spent another year with his mother. But she was nowhere to be seen. An X-ray brought good news: the break […]
Native plants are being placed on the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing Tuesday, marking another milestone for what officials say will be the largest bridge of its kind in the world. Over the next few months, about 5,000 more plants are expected to be installed along the bridge — which stretches over all 10 lanes of the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills — to help create a nearly one-acre wildlife habitat. Once complete, the crossing is expected to reconnect areas traversed […]
The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing Native Plant Nursery has only one function: to grow hyperlocal native plants for the world’s largest wildlife crossing over the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills. Back in 2022, nursery employees wandered the hills around the crossing collecting a million seeds from native plants. Those seeds have been planted, replanted, nursed through driving rains and scorching summers to finally start their new lives on the crossing itself. Read the full article here.