The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing (WAWC) is a project designed to help wildlife safely cross a major California freeway. The total price tag for the project was supposed to be $92 million, some of it donated by rich Californians.
The state projected a 2025 completion date for the bridge and “other ancillary developments,” which, given California wackos, could be things like public restrooms for bears and bed-and-breakfasts for mountain lions.
Four years after Newsom announced the project, it’s overdue and $21 million over budget. But it’s employing a lot of greens, which I suppose is a good thing. WAWC leader Beth Pratt told City Journal that the bridge is an overpass “for everything from monarch butterflies to mountain lions.”
Pratt is a real piece of work. “This past January, donning a hard hat and a “#SAVELACOUGARS” jersey, Pratt announced a possible $21 million overage,” according to City Journal. “She effectively blamed President Trump, attributing the multimillion-dollar overrun to ‘tariffs, inflation, [and] labor problems.’”
Why is it that greens have literally no self-awareness? How seriously can you take someone wearing a “#SAVELACOUGARS” shirt and blaming Donald Trump for their own incompetence?
“There’s no boondoggle,” Pratt said. “Given the times we’re living in,” a potential $21 million overage is “not that bad.”
Lord, save us from idiots, dolts, and environmental wackos.
Within days of Pratt’s announcement, the California Transportation Commission funneled another $18.8 million to the project, well exceeding the governor’s $10 million cap. The project’s total price tag now reaches about $114 million, reportedly including some $77 million in state funds. Newsom’s office pointed us to a press release in response to our request for comment.
Why has a project primarily consisting of a bridge for animals cost over $100 million? One reason is that Newsom and WAWC’s philanthropic supporters apparently don’t mind it becoming a patronage program. As the WAWC-endorsing Wildlife Crossing Fund notes, citing the California Department of Transportation’s estimate, “for every $1 billion spent” on wildlife crossings, “13,000 jobs are created.”
Wow! Thirteen thousand jobs is nothing to sneeze at. It’s “what kind of jobs are being created” that might stick in your craw.
Some of these jobs are absurd. The National Wildlife Federation’s WAWC website claims that “[o]ur Native Plant Nursery”—apparently funded by the nonprofit SAMO Fund and other “partners”—“has prioritized hiring Indigenous team members to help steward the plants that will vegetate the bridge.” The nursery’s co-manager said she makes an “offering” after collecting seeds, sometimes including pieces of her hair.
Or consider the ways one of the nursery workers and her associates have spent their time. The nursery’s founding manager worked with “helpers and volunteers” to “seed scout[]” across the Santa Monica Mountains. Her associates on the “design team” received “feedback from all the various project partners”—including state and federal bureaucrats—for their plant list.
Other jobs include a fungi specialist, who, Pratt says, worked as a WAWC habitat designer, “periodically scrutinizing root samples under a microscope.” Then there was a soil specialist under contract who said his process involves “assessing local dirt to ‘rebuild it… as close to nature as possible.’”
Not just “only in California.” Why limit yourself? “Nowhere else in the universe” is more applicable.
Newsom says he wants to set aside $115 million “to replicate projects like this all up and down the state.” Pratt is swooning. She thinks “hundreds more crossings are needed.” Meanwhile, L.A. traffic is hellish, and building bridges for deer, mountain lions, and butterflies might not address the real traffic problems in the state, but at least the tree toads and other rare and nearly extinct species of wildlife will have a nice, new road to crap on.
A perfect metaphor for what Newsom is doing to California taxpayers.
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