California to build world’s largest overpass to help wildlife cross freeway

Los Angeles officials have given the green light to plans for a special overpass meant to allow wildlife living around the city to move over a high-traffic freeway without being put in harm’s way by cars.

CBS News reported Wednesday that the largely privately funded project will be built along U.S. 101 and will become the second wildlife crossing in the state, which is home to rare animals such as the mountain lion.

{mosads}The city, which has struggled with keeping large wild animals such as mountain lions and bears out of residential areas, expects to break ground on the project within two years. The total cost of the overpass is set to top $87 million.

The bridge is expected to be open by 2023 and will stretch 200 feet over 10 lanes of traffic.

P-22, a California mountain lion given a designation by researchers in the state, has become the star of a fundraising campaign for the project, which raised about 80 percent of its funding from private sources, according to CBS.

“He is world famous, handsome, everybody loves him,” said Sheik Moinuddin, a project manager with the state’s Department of Transportation.

Architects assisting with the project say the goal is to blend in the overpass naturally with the landscape to minimize disruption for the animals.

“Ideally the animals will never know they’re on a bridge,” Clark Stevens, an architect with the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains, told CBS. “It’s landscape flowing over a freeway. It’s putting back a piece of the ecosystem that was lost.”