LOS ANGELES — The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing is still years from completion, but 8-year-old Nellie can already envision the animals using it.
“I tried to draw bears here,” she said of her rendition, which she described as more cartoony than the architect’s rendering. “But these ended up being the bears. And these ended up being like coyotes or something.”
Meanwhile, at the site of the actual crossing, Beth Pratt identified the distinct sound of a nearby woodpecker and the call of a white-crowned sparrow.
“He’s hiding, which is good practice,” she said.
Pratt is the regional executive director for the National Wildlife Federation and the force of nature behind the massive crossing that will span Highway 101 at Liberty Canyon Road. She literally never tires of checking on the construction.
“I have to admit, I’ll get up at one in the morning and just kind of keep making loops,” she laughed. “It never gets old. Just seeing the progress. Just seeing those pillars go up is amazing.”
She’s talking about 10 pillars that have sprouted in the middle of the freeway — impossible to miss and a reminder of what’s to come. The rain may have led to a few delays, but on the whole, things are moving right along.
“CalTrans is telling us that probably by summer, we’ll see a skeleton of the structure across the freeway,” she said, taking in a bird’s eye view of the construction site. “That’s gonna be awesome.”
Pratt loves talking about the project as much as she loves looking at it, which is why every so often she and the projects’ many partners — including CalTrans, the National Park Service and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy — hold an open house.
“It’s important to us that the community feels supported, that we are transparent about information,” she said. And while they’re used to this in lecture halls with slide presentations, she said the group eventually realized these meetings are “a lot more fun when you have margaritas and guacamole.”
On the Sunday before Earth Day, a week shy of the one-year anniversary of the groundbreaking, the groups expected several hundred people to come to the Adobe Cantina in Agoura Hills, just up the road from the crossing site — where they were served food and facts about the project.
Karina Domingo, founder and director with the Cougar Conservancy, said people have tons of questions.
“Why the wildlife crossing is being constructed, what the purpose is,” she said. “Why is it so big? And why isn’t it an underpass?”
She’s also actively enlisting volunteers for their coming docent program. They’ve trained 40 people so far and expect to start holding public tours as soon as May. Like Pratt, she gets a special thrill every time she drives past the site.
“You can see those big pillars in the middle of the freeway,” she explained. “I call those the high heel to the stiletto.”
Pratt, who often opts for rainbow-colored Keens over stillettos, has devoted more than a decade to getting this bridge built.
“Early on, we were told we were crazy,” she joked. “I guess we’re still told we were crazy. But to just see it, to see tangible proof of this thing that’s going to be this landmark conservation project. It feels good.”
“You know, so much of environmental protection and advocating for wildlife and natural areas is very abstract work, right?” she continued. “This is very tangible proof that... we won this one.”
She can’t wait to see Nellie’s drawing become a reality, with animals of all shapes and sizes using the crossing. Nellie’s dad, Ryan Huling, looks forward to that too.
“We see bears and other animals in our neighborhood,” he said. “And I think the more you can learn, the more you can protect them.”
Huling, who works in food sustainability, said he’s been following the progress of bridge for years and decided to attend the open house to hopefully get an update on the timeline for completion.
“I think, you know, we’ve all seen what happened with P-22 and other mountain lions,” he said, “Other animals have societies just like humans do when we want to make sure that wherever they overlap, that there’s, you know, protections in place to keep them alive.”