Los Angeles once had a four-legged folk hero: P-22, a lone mountain lion that improbably took up residence in Griffith Park. A famous photo features the charismatic cat with the Hollywood sign strategically aligned in the background. When P-22 died in 2022, the outpouring of attention included a celebration of his life at the Greek Theatre. P-22 became a rallying cry that pried loose the donations and public dollars that funded the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing across the U.S. 101 freeway near Los Angeles.
A bridge dedicated to helping animals safely cross one of the busiest freeways in the nation seems a cause worth supporting. But this particular effort comes with a breathtaking price tag and lavish overengineering—and is entirely unnecessary to protect the mountain lion.
Consider Utah's Parleys Canyon Wildlife Overpass, completed in 2018. The bridge is about 16,000 square feet, and it cost $5 million to build. That works out to roughly $312 per square foot. California's Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, meanwhile, is 35,700 square feet, with an estimated cost of $92 million—$58 million squeezed out of California taxpayers. That's more than $2,500 per square foot, over eight times the cost of the Utah bridge. California does have strict earthquake building codes and higher labor costs, but this lion-saving project is still four times the per-square-foot cost of a typical California bridge.
