A steady stream of vehicles is moving under a massive overpass in Agoura Hills. The motorists are unaware of what’s happening on top of the structure. It’s a major milestone for what will be the world’s largest wildlife crossing, providing safe passage over the freeway for everything from lizards to mountain lions.
"We're standing over one of the world's busiest freeways, Highway 101. 300,000 to 400,000 cars use it a day. But listen. You really don't hear the traffic. That's because we've put nature on tope of this freeway," said Beth Pratt, who is Regional Executive Director for the National Wildlife Federation.
She’s spearheaded what’s been a 14-year effort to build the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, in the Liberty Canyon area. While a major motivator for the project was to give mountain lions a way to safely cross wildlife corridors, it’s really for all types of wildlife.
"The construction to date has really been about things like the rebar and the concrete, but we're starting to put in for me what's the important part, which is the nature on top of the freeway," said Pratt. "We put the soil on (the crossing) ealier this year), and today, were putting the first native plants on top from the nursery, to start creating habitat for wildlife."
Dozens of people involved in the project are gathered on the crossing to celebrate the start of the planting. It's nearly an acre of land. There are huge walls on the sides of the crossing to keep the wildlife in, and to keep freeway noise out.
"It was a lot of work for our nursery team," said Pratt. "They started years ago. They gathered over a million hyperlocal seeds from a five mile radius, and have been growing them in our native plant nursery. I feel like I've watched these plants grow up, and today was graduation."
"It was like a dream," said Francis Appiah, who is a Senior Environmental Scientist with Caltrans. "We started with nothing, and now here we are. People doubted us, but we didn't doubt ourselve. We had the vision that it will happen, and now we are standing on this soil, with plants, on top of the 101. It's a dream come true."
A number of people representing different groups took part in planting some of the first plants on the overcrossing.
"This is really a unique spot in the Santa Monica Mountains, where there's open space on both sides of the freeway," said Agoura Hills Mayor Pro Tem Jeremy Wolf. "It's the only part in this whole corridor that has it. They had a vision to protect this. There's been years and years of planning. It's been tough on residents sometimes, because there are closures, but I think most people understand that once it's done, it's done, and we'll have the world's largest wildlife crossing here in Agoura Hills."
While the start of planting the roughly 5,000 native plants is underway, the project is far from complete. The structure over Highway 101 is in place, but the construction of bridges connecting it to hills on the north and south sides of the highway is just getting underway.
The hope is to have the crossing completed late next year. But, Pratt said they’ve already had wildlife use the crossing.
"We had about half the girders on, and so for the first time in 70 years there's darkness over the freeway," said Pratt. "To wildlife, darkness means safety. Researchers studying light pollution were actually out here, doing readings at night when they watched this barn owl circle, and then fly right over where the darkness was. A barn owl was actually the first to use the crossing."
While it’s expected all kinds of wildlife will use the crossing, people will have to settle for watching it on webcams. "This is going to be closed off to people. The wildlife are going to have privacy on it," said Pratt. "But, I think we have 68 cameras planned, so we'll be catching all that wildlife.
The project was expected to cost around $92 million dollars, with much of the funding coming from grants and foundations.But construction delays, the impacts of tariffs, and other issues have driven the latest estimates up to around $114 million. They had some reserves, and Pratt says they’re now doing a final round of fundraising to close the gap.
But, the first plantings celebrate a major milestone for the project, as the landscaping on top of the crossing begins to take shape.
