If you found an extra $114 million between the sofa cushions, how would you spend it? A cougar pedestrian bridge over California Highway 101?

Photo above - California's $114 million "Annenberg Wildlife Crossing". Don't get faked out by the name - taxpayers are picking up most of the tab. Groundbreaking took place in 2022.

First of all, I have nothing against cougars (aka mountain lions, panthers, or pumas). Cougars rarely attack people. Occasionally a purse dog or someone’s cat goes missing, but the evidence against cougars is anecdotal at best. And I have no desire to see cougar carcasses littering the interstate. We already have that with deer on Interstate 95 in the east.

How long should it take to construct a cougar pedestrian bridge? Groundbreaking took place in 2022. Completion is now hoped for in 2027, after numerous delays. The cost has soared from $92 million to $114 million. (see California wildlife crossing link below).

According to Governor Newsom (candidate for the 2028 democrat presidential nomination), the delays and cost overruns are due to Trumps tariffs. This makes a good campaign soundbite, and it might possibly be true, even if one discounts the cognitive effects of legal weed. However, the concept of a $114 million cougar pedestrian bridge is absurd in the first place. The last time I checked, California had epic problems with affordable housing, homeless encampments, fentanyl overdoses, and soaring crime. The state struggles each year to scrape together enough money to pay their teachers, police and fire departments. Please note that I am NOT equating understaffed fire departments with brushfires. Cougars would probably try to cross the road to get to the other side, even when it isn't brushfire season.

There’s also a lack of data about how many cougars which will be saved. California has 4,500 mountain lions and the vast majority DO NOT live adjacent to Highway 101 in southern California. Most are further north, and are considered pests when they prey on sheep, goats, llamas, emus and other non-native, invasive livestock. But nobody likes to those animals as invasive. To ranchers are meat, milk and leather. To native North American mountain lions, they are lunch.

The incidental dog and cat consumption by cougars near LA is a sideshow. But southern California voters are the ones whose sensibilities being pandered to. Nobody wants to see a dead cougar on the Highway 101 shoulder, or a gnawed Chihuahua carcass, either. My theory is that most Chihuahua disappearances are the result of coyotes, or kidnapping-ransom schemes targeting dogwalkers employed by California celebrities.

The mountain lion population in California is stable according to the Mountain Lion Foundation. So the taxpayer cost per cougar saved on Highway 101 near LA could be difficult to calculate.

But we CAN estimate that the state could have built 5,000 affording housing units ($250,000 each, 2 bedroom) with the $114 million cougar crossing money. Those apartments could even have been adjacent to California Highway 101, to provide quick access to residents’ jobs.

I’m just sayin’ . . .




https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/duffy-mocks-newsom-s-bridges-to-nowhere-as-california-wildlife-crossing-overruns-by-21m/ar-AA1Z0EPh?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=69bd0ca544f342c380d820482c5ef6f4&ei=40