The world’s largest wildlife crossing is nearly complete near Los Angles. The 210-foot-long bridge will give animals a safe way to cross 10 lanes of the busy 101 freeway.
There are six of these across the trans canada highway in banff. They've reduced wildlife collisions with traffic by 80% and 96% for deer and elk since they were built.
I was driving that way and loving the new ones they just finished up. The fact that the highway is fenced off so that the animals get funneled toward these overpasses is amazing. And safer.
Don't predators work out they're a good place to hunt? I know it's better than the alternative but can't help thinking about one giant toll collecting chonk of a bobcat.
There are lots of natural spots where this happens too - river crossings, watering holes, etc - plus or minus a few more isn't going to be a big difference most likely.
I think it's totally fine, and possibly even straight up beneficial, not just "better than the alternative" as its a win/win. Predators are already much more susceptible to the effects of urbanization.
Giving them a small advantage just restores the balance a bit.
I live in California and have seen wildlife crossings. Deer and other prey animals are heavily overpopulated in these areas compared to the deep forest and there are very few predators. They need large areas to hunt in and being disrupted by roads etc hurts them more than the prey.
I'm not a biologist or any kind of expert, just a resident who can google things, so I may be missing some key facts.
Just speculating here but imho even predators can't camp a specific location 24/7 and prey will figure out strategies to avoid them either way
But even if predators would become significantly more successful, reducing the population over time, it would still balance out eventually as food sources become scarce
I mean that's true about virtually any habitat disrupted by humans.
It's true of any habitat at all. There's always going to be some kind of "bottleneck" that predators work out is a good place to hunt. Be it water sources or whatever. It isn't just human created ones.
Yeah honestly I really don’t see why anyone wouldn’t want them around. Even if they don’t care about the ecosystem, I’m sure they care about animals jumping out in front of them on the highway lol
Nature is woke, if we eliminate all life in a 20 miles radius around the highway it's cheaper it solves the problem and a friend of the politician that made it possible can sell the meat and hides.
It's not just the car values - it's the emergency services, police, repairing road damage if ping-ponging a bobcat ruins a section of safety rail, the "cost" of shutting down a lane section and getting people to go around an accident. Everything has a price, and it adds up quickly.
Realistically with zero automotive traffic running on them they should easily last a few multiples longer with less mantainence than a standard bridge.
I have a suspicion that buying the surrounding land was a huge factor for that price being so high.
In the 50s, transit departments didn't view safety beyond the roadway part of their perview. As an engineer, I find the history fascinating. Perceptions changed drastically over time.
My great Uncle (94) was a chief engineer that designed the first road barriers (saving countless lives over the decades). We even talked about it this weekend.
Perceptions changed over the responsibilities of driver safety, not to mention that of wildlife. It is hard to judge the actions and perceptions of those in the past. Learn from history and address the future! (Don't judge their actions)
The one in Netherlands is longer but it's not a continuous bridge. I couldnt find a continuous one larger than this LA one. Guess it depends on how you want the parameters. LA is certainly the largest bridge structure for nature, but not largest nature passage, in general.
They have them along the highway driving into Banff, AB. I always thought it was such a good idea.. but i don't get how they get the animals to use it lol. It's not like they can read a sign saying "crossing in 1km"
They've been working on it for what feels like 20 years already. I'm exaggerating but it's been a few years so maybe it's just a coincidence. Every construction in LA is a beaurocratic hell. Or you're right, could be that too.
you're not. it was first proposed in 1990 and work started 4.5 years ago. They've been "working" on it for 36 years and people from other countries are like oh yeah we have these all over the place
I used to live right by where this bridge is and anyone who's lived in LA knows that without the bullshit you could grab a crew of dudes and knock this bridge out in like 2 weeks for 1/10th the cost.
We're acting like its some big accomplishment, but I drove on the autobahn in Germany like 15 years ago and they have wildlife bridges all over the place.
Right? Natuurbrug Zanderij Crailoo is 2,625 ft long and about 164ft wide at the narrowest point...
That blows whatever this one is out of the water in any measurable sense. Seems very typical American to call it 'worlds largest', since the world doesn't go beyond their borders it seems XD
Construction on California somehow finds a way to take 3X as long as you think it will. I’m from WA and I was amazed at just how long it took things to get done in CA despite things taking long back home
For real. California voted for high speed rail in 2008 and the first operating segment (Merced to Bakersfield) is supposed to open in 2032. There are going to be people working on it who weren't even conceived when it was voted on.
I live in LA. There was a goodwill that burned down near my house around 2015. They have been doing construction on that building since then. For 11 years I have seen workers there sometimes, setting up scaffolding or moving various equipment or debris, but no progress ever seems to be made. Sometimes I don’t see them for months, didn’t see anyone for about a year or two after Covid. I swear it’s like a secret villain hideout or something
i remember an article from some decades ago where SNCF (french national rail firm) visited los angeles as a bid to develop that project bu backed out right away saying california was politically dysfunctional, lol. extra funny knowing france is notorious for hellish bureaucracy.
i think the problem with america is that there are too many private entities and any municipal project has to suffer a long, expensive legal discussion with each one. which is the opposite of what people here assume, that american government is too bloated and corrupt and that's why projects take forever.
I kinda get the light rail taking forever. It’s one of the first of its kind in the states, and it’s big as shit. A 200’ overpass for animals for $100M when it’s been done for a fraction of that, I don’t get that at all
I can't wait until they close it down in 2 years bc who tf would go between those two places
sounds like they got pushed around by NIMBYs and maybe environmentalists and it's designed to fail.
even the stops aren't great places. i'm 100% certain people that can afford high speed rail will not be taking high speed rail and majority of the people who live in those places will either not be able to afford it, or have better choices than to take high speed rail.
As someone who currently lives in Washington that made me chuckle. There is currently a light rail extension project that has an optimistic completion date of 2042 and a contingency one that pushes it out to the mid-2060s.
I can only image how long the consenting procedure was for this thing. Reports from animal behaviour experts, probably a whole bunch of optioneering of alternative solutions. 10 years is probably a blow out I am sure but this would take a few years given everything going perfectly.
I remember seeing a news story on facebook about the city of LA starting to build this a few years ago, and in the comments it was an endless stream of boomers deriding the project as a waste of tax dollars. I’m so glad we still have people in a position of power who have empathy and a custodial view of our time on this earth.
I’m within Nextdoor range of this bridge and the boomers are still bitching about it every chance they get. You really want to get them going, bring up the state housing mandates.
Everyone should be considering the collision avoidance alone more than pays for itself with these things. And feeding children, a country's most valuable resource so they can grow optimally does too.
Now I hope more of our wetlands can be restored because all I think about these days is water access. For us and them.
Best part is it wasn’t paid by taxes. Rich people do good rich people shit and pay for things that help society. (Yes, helping animals and the natural ecosystem is good for society - this message is for the weirdos)
Lol. Sure some donated but to just proclaim they paid for it is wrong.
Wiki -
"In 2014, the California Wildlife Conservation Board gave a $650,000 grant to the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains for the design of the crossing.[34]
In 2015, the California Coastal Commission gave a $1 million grant to Caltrans for environmental assessment.[4] Private donors were encouraged to contribute.[35] The project stalled for years due to lack of funding.[4] In May 2021, the Annenberg Foundation pledged to donate another $25 million once the project raised $35 million.[36][37][38] As of mid-April 2022, donations totaled more than $87 million, with more than 5,000 people, foundations, agencies, and businesses contributing expertise and donations.[39]
The project costs around $90 million, with funding from private donations covering about 60% and the rest coming from public funds set aside for conservation purposes.[40]
In February 2026, Governor Newsom announced that an additional $18 million would be provided by California from general funds in addition to the funds allocated by the California Transportation Commission from the Environmental Enhancement and Mitigation Program.[41"]
My in laws helped make this happen, and I’m so proud and happy that it’s about to be open. This should be a bipartisan initiative: we need to put them in everywhere wildlife habitats have been sectioned off by highways. Too many animals are hit by cars trying to get from one side of their habitat to the other. Research shows animals quickly learn the crossings are safe and they always start using them. That means less animal deaths, and less car damage and injuries to drivers. It’s a win win for everyone. Please support these crossings!
The comments here are acting like this is an entirely new thing, while it has been done in lots of countries. Maybe I sit in a bubble, but if you ride around Europe where is dozens of these.
I'm pretty sure we got bigger ones in EU too... so i just looked it up the netherlands has an 800 meter long one which ist like 0.5 miles it was build in 2006
Part of it is because it's so big and there's so much to see in the US. You have NYC, Miami, LA, Grand Canyon, Vegas, Yellowstone, Big Sur, Chicago, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, etc, etc. Many people have to leave their country to get that much variety.
There's a lot of these in Poland, we got a lot of forests and such and I keep seeing wildlife crossings on highways, there are both ones above and below the road as different kind of animals use it
Animals are way smarter than many of the people posting comments. LOL.
"Montana’s Highway 93 includes dozens of wildlife crossings built in the 2000s with support from the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and the Center for Large Landscape Conservation. Deer, black bears, and other animals have used the structures more than 22,000 times each year and wildlife—vehicle collisions declined by over 70%. "
That one is 64 meters long and 53 meters wide. The actual biggest in the world (in the Netherlands) is 800 meters long and 50 meters wide. Americans just think the world ends at their border.
Although a noble effort but it aches me to see in a world with trillionaires qnd crazy money- that this is the largest we can build to help sustain nature. As rightly pointed out by someone in the thread -this should be a norm for any major construction project
They've been building this thing for 4.5 years. Why does everything take so long in california? They first proposed it in 1990. I remember seeing something about this on Channel 1 News in 1999. 36 years for this is everything that is wrong with modern american society, and that's before you even get to 100+ million price tag
Construction was delayed a few times by weather. This project also likely took longer because it's an active and busy freeway, so construction was limited to overnight hours and only partial closures to avoid major traffic disruptions.
Also, while I understand the frustration, I think it's misleading to suggest this was first proposed in 1990. What you're referring to is a report commissioned by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy that identified this canyon as an important crossing area. But:
At that time, most of the property in this landscape choke point was privately owned, and the future of preserving this critical inter-mountain range habitat linkage was anything but certain. Over the next thirty years, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, and its joint powers partner, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority as well as the National Park Service, systematically acquired much of the private land identified in the 1990 study using voter-approved funds, and permanently protected a critical mass of habitat that will now make it possible to link the mountains with the Liberty Canyon Wildlife Crossing.
There is a really weird juxtaposition on the state side where there are interests groups for this stuff and interest groups against this stuff and they usually slow it down with environmental impact reports / CEQA. Which you’d think would be a positive thing for the environment, but they’re also factoring in the impact of the development even what it takes to mine the materials. It’s really weird. I work in an environmental field for the state and these kinds of things make projects take FOREVER even if it’s a net good
Look up "Avg cost of a highway overpass, by sq ft"
Ranges from $2,500 and $9,000+ per square foot of deck area
8 lanes of highway = 140ft, so use (140 ft wide x 80 ft long)
11,200 sq ft * $2,500 = Low end Est $28,000,000
11,200 sq ft * $9,000 = High end Est $100,800,000
This is considerably more complicated than a basic deck + concrete/asphalt. It's not a fusion reactor or anything, but this is certainly inline with similar projects.
This has been a known thing we should’ve been doing for so long to defragment ecosystems. But that’s too expensive, let’s just give some tax breaks to rich people or something
Glad CA is doing this and hopefully they don’t just stop at one.
These are incredibly important. In time we will find this is money well spent. It will dramatically decrease animal strikes saving lives of the animals, potentially people, and lower insurance hopefully
The best thing I've seen on the internet all day! The impact transportation has on nature breaks my heart, I feel so hopeful seeing this! I'd love to see a future where the wildlife living near highways/rural roads can be largely unimpacted by it.
You can easily ask Google why this has taken so long. People think you can rush designing a bridge that supports ecological wild life over a busy highway.
And steel, engineering assessments and schematics, proper foundationing to account for earthquakes and resist landslides, compensation for workers, budgeting for any possible accidents or hazards on job site, native plant cultivation, yadda yadda.
Bottom line is that it's a proper project, not one of Trump's ego builds where most of the money is funneled to a friend.
It's also concrete with plants growing on it. You have to design it for the water that will be pooling and staying on top of it. We design roads to shed water because it's destructive. This is the opposite.
These have become very successful in Colorado. Saved a lot of animals and people as elk, bear and wolves, moose and more roam our mountains. Hitting any of these larger animals ca result in both human and wildlife fatalities. Money well spent.
Most predators are not stationary. They have large territory and they move around it doing all their important animal business.
They're probably not gonna sit at the bridge every day to kill prey.
Plus, one of the things about prey animals is they travel in groups. A predator camping at the bridge is still not going to eat all of them.
And the prey don't have to cross the bridge all the time, only when it's advantageous to move from one area to the other.
Plus, access to a larger area for forage and mating is going to increase the number and health of prey animals which also offsets the effects of being hunted through a choke point.
And how many of them will survive and reproduce which otherwise would have been pancaked on a freeway?
It's a net positive. If it wasn't, we would have stopped doing it instead of continuing to build more of these bridges.
I mean maybe? But it's out in the open where animals only like to be temporarily. There's no high bush or tree cover.
Also, they put different obstacles for different sized animals. I have to give an example or I sound nutty - on another crossing, the entire length of one side of it is a continual layering of sticks so small rodents can crawl under cover without getting picked off.
I live about 10 minutes from the wildlife crossing and it’s been in progress for what feels like years now. The notion that it’s close to being done is not true, they still need to build the other, longer section of the bridge in addition to connecting it to both sides. Happy to see the outcome, but it has taken far too long, and been far too expensive for this type of project to be completed. I just hope it was worth it in the end.
Huh. We've got the same thing just north of Detroit, but for Jewish people not having to cross major roads on sabbath, or something close. Not a bridge, just a slightly narrow park. I always thought it was weird every other city didn't do it for animals to cross over, too, since we've already got working examples in how little roadkill our area has compared to even a city or two over.
I studied these in university. The benefits are obvious but they also noticed long term desensitization of wildlife to highway activity, threatening long term safety.
1.1k
u/ShyguyFlyguy 16h ago
There are six of these across the trans canada highway in banff. They've reduced wildlife collisions with traffic by 80% and 96% for deer and elk since they were built.