The highway crossing that may save southern California's remaining mountain lions is now closer to reality. Gov. Newsom signed a transportation bill that includes $7 million to fund construction along with $54.5 million for other wildlife crossings in the state. Crashes on California highways involving wildlife occur at a surprisingly high rate with an estimated 7,000 a year. These incidents cost an estimated $1 billion between 2015 and 2018. More than just dollars is the fact that crossings allow animals, some endangered, to live longer, healthier lives.
Highway 101 bisects mountain lion habitat in the Santa Monica Mountains. The remaining lions face extinction in the next fifty years unless man extends a helping hand. The Angora Hills overpass
{19.09.15} will allow cougars to intersperse to avoid
inbreeding of isolated populations that would lead to an "extinction vortex". Building the overpass, likely the world's largest dedicated wildlife structure, would help prevent that, but also increase the regions biodiversity. The project is expected to cost $87 million is funded with public and private donations. The Anneberg Foundation contributed $25 million. Actor Leonard Di Caprio's foundation chipped in $250,000. Caltrans, the state road building department, is not accustomed to building bridges and tunnels for wildlife to use. But that many change if Senate Bill 790 is approved. It creates an incentive system that would allow Caltrans to get mitigation credits from the state if it retrofits highways with new crossings for 'critters'. The bill received overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate and is now in the Assembly for consideration.
Governor Newsom has a family legacy of cougar conservation. More than thirty years ago his father, William Newsom, championed the legislation that prohibited hunting lions in California. He told the
Sacramento Bee that he recalls licking envelopes to promote the ban. Unfortunately the legislation he supported as a kid came with a Catch-22: lethal permits for cougars that kill livestock. The
Bee determined that with the availability of depredation permits, more cougars have been killed since Prop 117 was passed in 1990. Part of the problem appears to be the mandatory language of the law that requires a permit to be issued upon request. P-56, a member of the threatened Santa Monica population, was killed using such a permit after he killed his 12th sheep. Thirty years later, conservationists are pressuring Gov. Newsom to place mountain lions on the state's endangered species list. Agricultural interests insist Prop 117 cannot be amended without a new ballot initiative, or a three-fifths vote in the state legislature.
The ground breaking overpass at Liberty Canyon is an opportunity for the state to begin a new legacy of conservation, while making highways safer for humans and saving a rare, iconic species from certain extinction. “I wish I could bring P-56 back, but I can’t, and I have regret about that,” Chuck Bonham, Newsom’s top wildlife appointee told the Fish and
Game Commission, “We do not want to be the people who watch that rare population of lions in Southern California go extinct.”
