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Posted on 03/18/2026 11:24:59 AM PDT by lowbridge
In 2022, California Gov. Gavin Newsom broke ground on the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing (WAWC), a project featuring an overpass for animals atop ten lanes of the 101 Freeway in Southern California.
At the ceremony, Newsom boasted that the state had committed $54 million. He promised to “complete the job within another $10 million,” before seeming to hedge on whether that final sum would do the trick.
Officials projected a 2025 completion date for the overpass, and estimated that the entire project — which includes the bridge and other ancillary developments — would cost $92 million, some of it coming from private philanthropists.
Nearly four years after the ceremony, the bridge is past due and the project some $21 million over budget. What was supposed to be the world’s largest wildlife crossing has become a jobs program for environmentalists, with taxpayers on the hook for what WAWC leader Beth Pratt told us is an overpass “for everything from monarch butterflies to mountain lions.”
Pratt, a cougar-sweater-wearing environmental activist who serves on WAWC’s Partner Leadership Team, is the program’s public face. She is also a regional executive director of the national Wildlife Federation. In 2021, the group received a $25 million grant from “Wallis Annenberg and the Annenberg Foundation” for the bridge that bears the late philanthropist’s name.
That money apparently was not enough. This past January, donning a hard hat and a “#SAVELACOUGARS” jersey, Pratt announced a possible $21 million overage. She effectively blamed President Trump, attributing the multimillion-dollar overrun to “tariffs, inflation, [and] labor problems.”
“There’s no boondoggle,” she said. “Given the times we’re living in,” a potential $21 million overage is “not that bad.”
In response to our request for comment on the cost increases, Pratt argued that they were consistent with those faced by other construction projects.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
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I don’t understand why gov’t contracts don’t have cost overrun clauses and late penalties in them.
It’s a bridge to the coffers of lefty politicians. Duh?
She doesn't look old enough to be a cougar...
Because these projects are just a means to take public money and redistribute it to cronies and special interest groups.
I would say, because often the Government is the problem!
Lots of red tape and changing requirements on whim.
I would say, because often the Government is the problem!
Lots of red tape and changing requirements on whim.
It’s a wolf feeding funnel. (Not quite yet, but give it a couple more years.)
See the Teanaway Pack in the middle.
I am a pilot, and there were times I was flying a King Air at midnight after the testing data was good and the ink was still wet to hand deliver components...
Runways in the foothills of Virginia, desert dirt strips in Texas, and strips in the middle of nothing in Montana, and I mean nothing. Oddly enough they were there waiting on you.
Again proving the entire purpose of Dim government grants and environmental “projects” is for the use of taxpayer funds to (1) build and support the non-profit industrial complex that serves as a principal symbiotic relationship - you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours - with the Dims, (2) so that that non-profit industrial complex will serve as a political activist base and donor network for Dim’s election efforts.
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There is a famous recording from I believe a sheriffs office in PA. On the voicemail message to the sheriff the WOMAN is chastising them for putting up the DEER CROSSING signs in the wrong places. That SHE does not think it is correct/right to put these designated crossing over the highway where the deer can be hit by automobiles.
Meaning, she actually thought the deer were ONLY crossing the highway at the locations where these signs were posted.
That the deer could read the signs and were just following the orders of the sheriffs department on where to cross.
Agree when the wildlife crossing is completed they start to wonder how come no more pets and some small children aren’t around as much.
Timmy’s shoes found near by.
Another Kalifornia Democrat special project costing the taxpayers $100 million so far. I suggest someone ought to start checking their pockets and bank accounts in country and off shore. They are literally breaking the state bank and making off with millions and they’re getting away with it because they’re all Democrats and they all have their fingers in pie.
they are simply placeholders to provide funding sources and bilingual sites to transfer tax payer money for political payoffs to democrat cronies
In modern America, the deer can English but illegal aliens cannot.
It's just another pretext for graft.
Theft
Connect the non-existent bridge to the non-existent high speed rail.
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