Last year Mr Man and I drove north from Los Angeles. Our goal was San Francisco and points in between, but before we could get there we had to escape LA. Our hotel room faced south and had a view of the pool and a sliver of Hollywood Boulevard, but nothing that resembled nature. We plotted a course out of the city that took us north through the canyons and picked up a rental car.
Heading into the hills, we drove through a landscape that, while studded with the bright flowers of a superbloom, revealed a checkerboard of green growth and canyons sliced into smaller and smaller segments. Hollywood, Beverly Hills, the 101 and the 405 frame the natural world in a rigid network of pavement.
How, I wondered, do animals without wings survive here? The answer is with difficulty.
There is, however, some good news on that front!
World’s largest wildlife bridge will help animals cross California highway – The Washington Post
The 10-lane freeway that slices through this part of Southern California is one of the busiest in the country, ushering more than 300,000 cars across the greater Los Angeles area every day.
For drivers, it’s a nightmare: This stretch of Highway 101 is known as the “highway from hell,” the infamous host of the nation’s worst commutes.
But if the 101 is bothersome for bipeds, it is downright disastrous for the wildlife that also calls the region home. The 101 cuts like a chain saw through a vibrant natural ecosystem of coastal sage scrub and oak trees interspersed with suburban neighborhoods, disrupting the movement of animals and threatening their survival.
Now a massive infrastructure project is underway to suture together the vast tracts of fragmented wildlife habitat that have been separated by the highway for decades. Construction on a key phase of the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing — a $100 million structure funded by a mix of public and private money — began last month and is expected to open in early 2026.
One thing the article doesn’t get into is the fact that wildlife crossings, while not cheap to build, actually save money and lives.
Earth Day Success Story: Wildlife Crossings Keep Animals and People Safe – Newsweek
“They are a cost-effective way of addressing the problem from the human side,” she said, pointing out the human toll from collision deaths, injuries and damage to vehicles. “We’ve got structures in the western states where they pay for themselves in less than five years.”
Like, A Lot of money, and A Lot of lives, both animal and human. It’s also not just a problem in highly urbanized landscapes like LA.
Animal crossings over and under highways can save big dollars — not just lives — says new study
WSDOT published a report of its own earlier this year on the benefits of wildlife crossings for road safety. Aside from matters of life and death, WSDOT estimated the average vehicle-deer collision resulted in economic costs of $9,175. Hitting an elk ballooned the average cost per collision to $24,242 and a moose even more, $42,652 per collision.
The good news is that California isn’t the only one getting in on this party. They’re actually a little late to the game. Canada pioneered wildlife overpasses two decades ago, and the idea has spread around the world.
The story of Canada’s pioneering adventures in overpasses for non-humans: As Banff’s famed wildlife overpasses turn 20, the world looks to Canada for conservation inspiration.
Fancy study with many long paragraphs and detailed mitigation case studies but here’s the really interesting bit: It can actually cost less to build a crossing than to do nothing. As an example, it’s estimated that the annual cost of animal collisions at $232 million (in 2021 dollars, which is like a million bajillion now).
And finally, here’s a page with a handy chart summarizing the average “Direct monetary costs of ungulate-vehicle collisions” (as a Pennsylvanian/Canadian I know such collisions are a big deal, but it’s even more dramatic to see the difference between the cost of hitting a deer ($6,617 and a moose $30,760 (in 2007 dollars, no less)!)
In conclusion, I love the idea of animal crossings for a number of reasons. Not only does it save animals and ecosystems while costing less in the long term, it also safeguards people. I love solutions that are smart, sensible, and just make sense.
Win win!
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