With the recent Cougar death via car collision on the 405 Freeway in Los Angeles, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, the Mountains Recration Authority and the Calif. Transit Authority are hoping to build wildlife under and overpasses that will facilitate the movement of cougars, coyotes, bobcats, foxes, deer and other critters which now find it impossible to cross SoCal freeways............Funding decisions are expected to be rendered by early 2012..............One of the targeted "wildlife tunnels" would be one exit up the 101 freeway from my home.............Wouldn't that be fantastic!!!!!

Agencies seek funding for wildlife corridor

By Teresa Rochester

Highway 101 may be a valuable thoroughfare for people, but it also has effectively hemmed in the mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes and mule deer that roam the Santa Monica Mountains and Simi Valley hills.
Caltrans hopes to undo the critter gridlock in the eastern Conejo Valley with a freeway underpass, with the support of local groups, federal and state agencies and elected officials.

Caltrans District 7 officials have applied for a competitive $8.3 million Transportation Enhancement grant to create a tunnel just west of the Highway 101/Liberty Canyon interchange. The rest of the project's $9.4 million total cost would be covered by a $1.08 million grant a local agency likely would seek.

"It's been an important project," said Barbara Marquez, a senior environmental planner with Caltrans.
Along with protecting motorists who might encounter an animal on the road, the wildlife corridor would keep animals safe from vehicles by meeting their biological and territorial needs.

Mountain lions need to roam long distances. It's feasible they could travel as far north as San Luis Obispo. Having a larger area to move through also lessons the chance for inbreeding, which can cause health problems and disease. Male mountain lions also are highly territorial and prefer to stay far away from other males."It's definitely a challenge for wildlife," said Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area Superintendent Woody Smeck. "They need an interconnected habitat ... to sustain their genetic diversity and the health of the populations."

Last month, a 15-month-old male mountain lion, dubbed P-18, was struck by a vehicle and killed trying to cross Interstate 405 just south of the Getty Center Drive southbound off-ramp. P-18 might have been trying to cross the freeway to find unoccupied open space.There are two other male mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains being tracked by the National Park Service with global positioning systems on their collars, as part of a decade-long study.P-18, who had been tracked since he was 3 weeks old, was one of two mountain lions killed on the freeway in three years.

An increase in road kill on Highway 101 in the Liberty Canyon area and the emergence of conservation biology helped inspire the concept of local wildlife corridors. Smeck and representatives with the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority began discussing the issue about 20 years ago. The agencies took the idea of an underpass at Liberty Canyon to Caltrans about 15 years ago.

The two groups split the $8 million cost to purchase property for the tunnel. Two principles of conservation biology is that animal populations can't live in isolation, and there is such a thing as minimum viable population size, said Paul Edelman, the conservancy's deputy director of natural resources and planning.

"When you drop below that population, it is not viable for 50 or 100 years," Edelman said. "And that was a wake-up call. Fortunately, we caught it just in time in our local system."

Equipment would be used to bore a hole for the tunnel under the freeway without having to shut it down.
"That was huge," Marquez said. "We don't want to close any freeway to traffic at all."
Caltrans District 7 has sought federal funding for the project before, in 2004 and 2006.
In 2006, a wildlife underpass funded with Transportation Enhancement money opened under Harbor Boulevard in Los Angeles County as part of the Puente-Chino Hills Wildlife Corridor. Nine days later, deer were photographed using it, according to the Puente Hills Landfill Native Habitat Preservation Authority's website. Coyotes and bobcats also use the underpass.Locally, Smeck, Edelman and others have identified other sites where tunnels could be installed, such as near I-405 at the Skirball Center Drive bridge and Highway 101 near the Conejo Grade.

An equestrian tunnel next to Rocky Peak Road and Highway 118 has become a de-facto wildlife corridor.
Smeck said animals routinely use the tunnel and are monitored with remote cameras, which are triggered when an animal steps on a tracking plate. A male and female mountain lion were monitored going back and forth using the tunnel. One of them was tracked using the tunnel a dozen times. Ultimately, both died after ingesting anticoagulants most likely in the blood of prey.

"They will use undercrossings if they have good habitat," Smeck said. "They are constantly moving around looking for food. They are looking to establish territory."

Caltrans representatives expect to learn if they'll get the underpass grant late this year or early next year. The project would undergo environmental review and then construction. It would take several years before it reaches the construction phase.

"So much energy has gone into the wildlife corridor for the last two decades," Edelman said. "This is really the crowning element that everyone is waiting for."