Highways weren’t built for animals. That’s starting to change. In 2012, Southern California was besotted with an unlikely celebrity: a telegenic mountain lion who had crossed one of the state’s most perilous freeways, seeking a territory to call his own. Widely deemed “LA’s loneliest lion” and “most eligible bachelor,” the chiseled puma in question, named...
When it opens in December, the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing will be the largest in the world. Stretched over a ten-lane freeway, it is meant to save the California Mountain Lion population, and to help numerous other species in the area whose habitat has become fragmented by the road. It could also serve as a...
The Mammoth Lakes U.S. 395 Wildlife Crossings Project has taken important steps forward toward becoming a reality recently, according to the Wildlife Crossing Fund, which supports innovative infrastructure systems that reconnect ecosystems disrupted by roadways. Beth Pratt, president and CEO of the Wildlife Crossing Fund, said this week that certain project requirements have been met,...
The Casa Diablo herd of mule deer call the Eastern Sierra Nevada home. They’re migrants. In the spring, after the snow melts, the herd seeks refuge from summertime heat in the high elevations of the mountains. But come fall, the herd moves back down to the high desert to escape the deep snowfall that the Sierra Nevada...
Life is blooming along the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, the $114 million project in Agoura Hills designed to provide a safe pathway for wildlife looking to traverse man’s intrusion into their habitat. On a recent stroll, Beth Pratt, regional executive director of the National Wildlife Federation, pointed out California poppies, white sage and other native...
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...
“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...
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...
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 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...
