The tale of Gavin Newsom’s $114 million wildlife bridge in Southern California dominated political talk on Wednesday, and for good reason. As of this date, its projected cost has doubled, and the estimated completion date of “2025” is in the rear-view mirror – all to ensure that less than two dozen mountain lions can get to the other side of the road and mate with a lion it’s not closely genetically related to.
You might have heard something about it being a butterfly bridge, but that’s not true. In fact, on the LA County Trails site about the bridge, formally known as the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing (WAWC), butterflies aren’t even mentioned as one of the species that will benefit from it; WAWC’s site focuses on the mountain lion as “the species most immediately at risk.”
“More than two decades of study by the National Park Service in the Los Angeles area has shown roads and development are not only proving deadly for animals trying to cross, but have also created islands of habitat that can genetically isolate all wildlife—from bobcats to birds to lizards. The species most immediately at risk, the mountain lion, could vanish from the area within our lifetime.”
The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy noted the barrier faced by the big, bad freeway in a press release:
“The freeway (US 101) is a formidable and virtually impenetrable barrier for many wildlife species, including mountain lions, bobcats, gray foxes, coyotes, and mule deer that inhabit and travel between these two mountain ranges. For mountain lions in particular, the consequences of this restriction results in increased inbreeding and territorial fighting, and very low genetic diversity, within the Santa Monica Mountains.”
Unfortunately for the families living in the towns around the bridge, who’ve lived through the deadly Woolsey and Palisades fires, the bridge will serve another purpose – as a wildfire express lane. Gabriel Mann, a documentary filmmaker, said:
Not only are they wasting money that could be used for fire mitigation, but they’re creating a contiguous bed of fuel to compromise the 101 fire break. https://t.co/HxmEtnMdBX pic.twitter.com/QFUzoL6frw
— Mann Made Cinema (@Hotshot_Movie) March 18, 2026
And, not surprisingly, it is brought to us by the exact same environmentalist nonprofits and public-private partnerships that allowed the Topanga State Park to become a fire trap, the same people who prevented the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) from fully extinguishing the Lachman Fire on January 1, 2025, before it became the Palisades Fire.
The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a California government agency and a leading force behind the project, owns 75,000 acres of land, including “the whole of the Santa Monica Mountains, the Simi Hills, the Verdugo Mountains and significant portions of the Santa Susana and San Gabriel Mountains.” The agency refuses to perform prescribed burns at any meaningful level and has a list of supposedly endangered plants it refuses to allow heavy equipment near; for example, the milkvetch plant that was seen in Temescal Gateway Park, which prevented firefighters from bringing bulldozers and other equipment in to fully suppress the Lachman Fire.
DIVE DEEPER: CA Eco-Bureaucrats Shut Down Palisades Wildfire Prevention Project in 2019… to Save a SHRUB
And now that milkvetch is being planted atop the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, along with other shrubs, trees, and flowers that will dry out every year and become wildfire fuel in a canyon that’s notorious for Santa Ana winds.
What could possibly go wrong?
We already know. Those of us who’ve lived in that area for decades, including myself, remember the night of November 8-9, 2018, when embers from the Woolsey Fire crossed the 101 at the precise location where this new death trap bridge is being built. The 101 acts as a natural fire break, and while major fires have jumped it, did we really need to put an express lane filled with natural accelerants there?
The bridge is right in the center where the Woolsey Fire jump to 101…..! pic.twitter.com/AQPcbXTInV
— 🇺🇸 MAGA VIKING (@bigbobv67) March 18, 2026
Despite this massive risk, Beth Pratt, the eco-warrior quoted by City Journal in their “butterfly bridge” piece, thinks it would be “hopeful” for motorists to be stuck in traffic to see a mountain lion right above them on the bridge:
“Someone could be in rush-hour traffic, and there could be a mountain lion right above them. I think that’s such a hopeful image, and one that inspires me that we can right some of these great wrongs.”
Pratt is also the founder of the nonprofit Wildlife Crossing Fund, which boasts several officials connected to WAWC, including Wade Crowfoot, California Secretary of Natural Resources, on its Board of Directors. Wildlife Crossing Fund received $25 million from the Wallis Annenberg Foundation for its work on WAWC, but we were unable to locate any Form 990’s for the organization.
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