The Bridge that Costs Millions, but Goes Nowhere

Welcome to California – the place that spends hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to build bridges that go…literally nowhere, and aren’t even for people, but are for animals! What kind of crazy dimension have we stepped into?

The What and Why of the Wildlife Crossing

Let me introduce you to the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing. To set the scene for you: this project began 2022, when our own Governor broke ground in Agoura Hills and committed $54 million to it. The projected completion date was for 2025, and the total projected cost was estimated to be $92 million – which included private funding as well as the committed taxpayer dollars.[1]

Stepping back, where is this project taking place and what is its purpose? This is essentially a bridge that is being built over the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills. It extends over 10 lanes of the highway, connecting the Santa Monica Mountains from the south with the Simi Hills in the north.[2] But, contrary to what you might think when you hear the term “bridge,” this project is not purposed for humans to cross the freeway by car, as most bridges are. Instead, this is a “wildlife crossing,” meaning it is specifically for animals.

The roots of this project go all the way back to the 1990s, when activists began to question the impact of the freeway on the surrounding wildlife. The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy commissioned a study which identified the location of the crossing as the best location to reconnect fragmented wildlife habitats – habitats they say were separated by the freeway.[3] In 2002, over a decade later, the National Park Service launched its own study to track the mountain lion population in the area, ultimately to make a determination on the impact of the freeway on population.[4] Researchers literally tracked over 100 mountain lions using GPS collars to understand how many were dying because of the CA-101.

From 2002 to today, researchers have found that a grand total of 32 mountain lions have been struck and killed by vehicles in the study area.[5] But that isn’t the only consideration in this issue. There have also been studies evidencing genetic collapse of the mountain lion population due to forced inbreeding from the fact that their habitat is fragmented by the freeway.[6] This results in abnormal mountain lion development, which threatens the health and longevity of the population. But the main catalyst for the freeway crossing project was much more personal than scientific – and that was lion P-22.

Puma-22 was first documented in Griffith Park in 2012. He had somehow crossed both the 405 and the 101 freeways as a young lion and ended up living alone in a park surrounded by urban development. He couldn't get back out to find a mate. His story gave the campaign a face; researchers say he "really got the ball rolling" for public and donor support.[7] The LA Times put out a “week in the life” feature story on him that tracked his diet and movements, and he was also featured on an episode of 60 Minutes. However, being a mountain lion, he was also suspected of killing a koala at the LA Zoo, as well as attacking and killing a dog near the Hollywood Reservoir.[8] Because of this behavior, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife made the “extremely difficult decision” to euthanize P-22 in December of 2022.[9]

Once the public was hooked on tracking the moves of mountain lions and treating them as though they were personal pets who they didn’t want to see die – it was then easy to get public backing and support for a project that would presumably keep them safe and prevent other pumas from enduring what P-22 lived through. The goal of the crossing in this location was simply framed to help animals cross the freeway safely – preventing their death on the highway and keeping their population and ecosystems intact.

The How of the Wildlife Crossing

That is what the bridge is and why it was introduced. But how did it go about the legislative process, funding, and ultimately end up where it is today?

On the private funding side: Wallis Annenberg, chair and CEO of the Annenberg Foundation – which focuses its philanthropy on the arts, education, animal welfare, environmental stewardship, and civic life[10] – made a $1 million pledge to the crossing in 2016, and then in 2021 she made a $25 million challenge grant, contingent on the campaign raising $35 million.[11] This was the largest private donation to a wildlife crossing ever made.

Meanwhile, on the government side: Governor Gavin Newsom allocated $54 million in statewide wildlife crossing funding in his 2021 budget.[12] Congressman Ted Lieu, representing California’s 36th district, secured $2.5 million in federal appropriations for Santa Monica projects.[13] Congress set aside $350 million nationally for wildlife crossings.[14] And on top of all of that, California passed Assembly Bill 2344, which requires Caltrans to systematically identify and address wildlife movement barriers across the state.[15]  So, our state policy and funding shifted radically in this direction as a result of the momentum gained on the philanthropic side.

But, even with funding, and public and political support, the crossing has not quite hit the goals that were promised. As of today, the bridge structure over the 101 itself is complete. However, the final phase involves extending the crossing over another local two-lane road, as well as completing various parts of the project like protecting heritage oak trees and finishing utility relocation. Total completion was originally targeted for 2025 but is now expected in the fall of 2026. And the timeline is not all that has shifted. The total project cost has risen to roughly $111-114 million, up from the original ~$90 million estimate.[16] Which is not really surprising in our state.

My Response to the Wildlife Crossing

It’s fairly obvious that any project with cost and timeline overruns, especially when taxpayer dollars are involved, is going to cause heartburn. As I’ve mentioned with so many other issues and topics in the past – our government projects need to be effective. Which means, if taxpayer money is being spent, then the project needs to be both 1) necessary, and 2) well-executed. But, beyond the obvious issues with the wildlife crossing, there are deeper questions raised that we should address. Yes, the state should deliver on its promises, and no it should not be overspending – especially in years of budget deficits – but those criticisms don’t get to the heart of the issue here.

The question at the root of this project is about environmental stewardship and conservation. It would be too reductionist to simply say "nature doesn't matter" and then write-off any projects to conserve wildlife around us. After all, American conservatism has a long and proud conservation lineage – just look at national parks, wildlife refuges, and habitat protection – these were all Republican priorities for much of the 20th century. Protecting mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains could potentially fall under that type of stewardship that older conservatives would have championed without hesitation.

But at the same time, is this specific project, and the way our government has gone about it, our only answer? This is where I would say: no. So, let’s walk through a few of the reasons why.

First, with every project like this, we must go back to the idea that government is not the answer, and taxpayer dollars are not the solution. This project was designed around private philanthropy leading the way. Wallis Annenberg put up $26 million of her own family's money through their philanthropic foundation. The National Wildlife Federation ran a years-long grassroots campaign. That model – civil society and philanthropy identifying a problem and funding the solution – is primarily how conservatives believe things should work. The answer in these cases should not be to turn to government.

But government got involved, pledging millions of your dollars to a project that should have been pursued privately. And as costs ballooned, the public side had to continually expand to cover the gap. The philanthropic enthusiasm that launched the project didn't scale to meet the actual cost. So, taxpayers – including Californians dealing with a housing crisis, crumbling roads, and chronic budget deficits – are now the primary funders of this wildlife bridge.

But taking it a step further, we must realize second, that when the government gets involved, there are not just financial ramifications, but policy ones as well. This one bridge was the catalyst for an entirely new bureaucratic framework. California's Assembly Bill 2344 scaled this from one project to a statewide effort – signaling a shift in policy priority. That's significant. One high-profile, emotionally resonant project, with a celebrity mountain lion, has now created an ongoing government mandate with an open-ended price tag. The Annenberg crossing generated political momentum that advocates then channeled into permanent policy. Which forces us to ask, how many more $114 million projects does that law eventually require?

And that brings us to our third and most important consideration here, which is the idea of hierarchy and trade-offs. Because the reality is: human civilization is built on our ability to reshape the natural world to serve human needs. Roads, cities, agriculture, industry – all of these will in some way disrupt or displace ecosystems. Yet, we've collectively decided that's an acceptable cost because the human benefit is enormous.

If mountain lions can't survive alongside human infrastructure, that's a tragic but acceptable outcome of progress. We shouldn't necessarily be spending $114 million trying to reverse every aspect of it. Why? Because humans are uniquely rational, moral, and creative beings, and our flourishing is the primary ethical good in society. Conservation spending that ends up hurting human beings or that doesn't serve human interests is at best misplaced sentiment and at worst a kind of ideological nature-worship that subordinates people to animals.

That is exactly what we have seen our culture – and our state especially – fall into over the decades. To the point where the question really is no longer about conservation! Conservation, which began as a noble expression of human stewardship, has quietly metastasized into an ideology that treats human activity as the problem rather than the solution. We must subordinate infrastructure, housing, farming, and economic development to the preferences of wildlife. This ideological framework treats every ecosystem as inviolable and every human need as negotiable.

But the irony is that genuine conservation is confident about human primacy. It recognizes that we are powerful enough to reshape the world, therefore we have a responsibility to be careful stewards of it. That's a position of strength. Instead, what's replaced it today, and is exemplified in this crossing project, is something closer to guilt – a view that says human presence is inherently destructive and must be constantly apologized for, mitigated, offset, and corrected. But that's not stewardship.

The worst part is that this guilt pushes our leaders into symbolic actions rather than effective ones. This single crossing is only a tiny piece of the problem. Freeways in generally are just one barrier in a landscape full of development. Wildlife will still have to navigate countless streets, fences, and urban areas. Add to that the fact that the research clearly found that in the past 24 years there have been 32 lions killed on freeways – and that the number on average per year has decreased over the time period, slowing that total. So, this millions-of-dollars bridge is a largely symbolic solution to a largely symbolic issue. California should be focusing its environmental energy on our water scarcity issues, or on wildfire prevention and forest management – problems that exist and impact the state’s residents day-to-day.

When a philosophy of guilt drives public policy, you get exactly what California has produced: $114 million for a mountain lion bridge in a state where working families can't afford to live, where roads are crumbling, where water infrastructure hasn't been meaningfully updated in decades. This is why this project seems so ridiculous on its face! Our state has denied every other priority that would serve its human population in favor of radical liberal climate agendas. But the mountain lions aren't actually the problem – I don’t want them to die any more than the next person. The ideology that makes their comfort a higher priority than human flourishing – that's the problem, and it will only continue to get worse if we don’t if we don't course correct and return to a conservation ethic that begins, and ends, with human beings at the center.

 
References:

[1] Rufo, Christopher F., and Kenneth Schrupp. “Gavin Newsom’s $114 Million Butterfly Bridge.” City Journal, March 18, 2026. https://www.city-journal.org/article/california-wallis-annenberg-wildlife-crossing-gavin-newsom.

[2] CalTrans. “US-101 – Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing at Liberty Canyon | Caltrans.” CA.gov, n.d. https://dot.ca.gov/caltrans-near-me/district-7/district-7-projects/d7-101-annenberg-wildlife-crossing.

[3] Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. “Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing at Liberty Canyon.” CA.gov, n.d. https://smmc.ca.gov/liberty-canyon-wildlife-corridor/.

[4] Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and U.S. National Park Service. “Lions in the Santa Monica Mountains,” n.d. https://www.nps.gov/samo/learn/nature/pumapage.htm.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Hewitt, Alison. “Southern California Mountain Lions Show First Reproductive Effects of Inbreeding.” UCLA, January 6, 2022. https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/local-mountain-lions-show-effects-of-inbreeding.

[7] UCLA Newsroom. “P-22 Remembered – Living With Mountain Lions and Other Urban Wildlife.” UCLA, January 12, 2023. https://newsroom.ucla.edu/advisories/ucla-experts-p-22-living-with-urban-wildlife#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWhen%20P%2D22%20became%20a,really%20got%20the%20ball%20rolling.%E2%80%9D.

[8] U.S. National Park Service. “Puma Profiles: P-22,” n.d. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/puma-profiles-p-22.htm.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Annenberg Foundation. “About the Foundation | Annenberg Foundation,” n.d. https://annenberg.org/about/.

[11] Saccone, Mike. “National Wildlife Federation Receives Record $25 Million Annenberg Challenge Grant for Largest Urban Wildlife Crossing in the World.” National Wildlife Federation, May 14, 2021. https://www.nwf.org/Latest-News/Press-Releases/2021/05-14-21-Annenberg-Foundation-Wildlife-Crossing#:~:text=Annenberg%20Foundation's%20Conservation%20Challenge%20Grant,conservation%20efforts%20across%20the%20globe.

[12] Rufo and Schrupp, “Gavin Newsom’s $114 Million Butterfly Bridge.”

[13] Congressman Ted Lieu. “REP LIEU SECURES $2.5 MILLION FOR LOCAL PROJECTS IN SANTA MONICA | Congressman Ted Lieu,” February 7, 2023. https://lieu.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/rep-lieu-secures-25-million-local-projects-santa-monica#:~:text=WASHINGTON%20%E2%80%93%20Today%2C%20Congressman%20Ted%20W,our%20community%20a%20better%20place.%22.

[14] King, Rebecca Boslough. “U.S. Policy Preview: Wildlife Road Crossings Program Reauthorization Act.” Conservation Corridor, March 30, 2026. https://conservationcorridor.org/digests/2026/03/u-s-policy-preview-wildlife-road-crossings-program-reauthorization-act/#:~:text=There%20are%20currently%20three%20bipartisan,28%20states%20requested%20$585%20million.

[15] Diversity, Center for Biological. “California Senate Passes Safe Roads Bill, Putting Statewide Wildlife Connectivity Within Reach.” Center for Biological Diversity, August 30, 2022. https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/california-legislature-passes-safe-roads-bill-putting-statewide-wildlife-connectivity-within-reach-2022-08-29/#:~:text=Assembly%20Bill%202344%20(A.B.%202344)%20is%20a,Underpasses%20*%20Culverts%20*%20Other%20infrastructure%20improvements.

[16] Rufo and Schrupp, “Gavin Newsom’s $114 Million Butterfly Bridge.”