California taxpayers pay $500M for wildlife crossings

(The Center Square) – California’s taxpayers paid at least $500 million this year to build wildlife crossings over highways and freeways, potentially offsetting $1.64 billion in economic costs caused by large wildlife vehicle collisions.That’s according to numbers from the Coachella Valley Mountains Conservancy, the Mojave Desert Land Trust and the Road Ecology Center at University of California, Davis. The Coachella Valley Mountains Conservancy and the Mojave Desert Land Trust announced earlier this year that the trust would receive $5.5 million of taxpayer funds for the planning phase of wildlife crossings and an additional $512,000 from Proposition 4.
Prop. 4 was a $10 billion bond measure approved by California voters in 2024. That bond money was intended to pay for safe drinking water, wildfire and forest resilience, clean energy, nature-based climate solutions, park creation and outdoor access, extreme heat mitigation and agriculture, according to a 2025 report from the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
Officials with the Coachella Valley Mountains Conservancy and Mojave Desert Land Trust did not respond to The Center Square for this story.
Wildlife crossings are naturally-landscaped bridges for wild animals to cross over highways, freeways and major roads to avoid getting hit and causing traffic accidents.
“Making sure that wildlife can fulfill their lifecycle, to go where they need to go to access good habitat, food, to mate, to move across the landscape for animals both big and small, that’s super important for wildlife,” Colin Reynolds, senior adviser for the Northwest Field Conservation Program, told The Center Square on Friday. “Right now, a lot of our habitat is fragmented by roadways, development, things like that. Finding ways to stitch that landscape back together, that’s such an important and fulfilling thing to do.”
Deer, mountain lions, elk, bears, skunks, raccoons and opposums are some of the most common species to fall victim to getting hit by cars on California’s roads, according to the California Wildlife Board, but the larger animals cause traffic accidents that can be dangerous for humans the most.
With more wildlife crossings, that will happen less, wildlife officials say.
“We, over the last number of years, have put $130 million into supporting planning and development of these types of crossings, and it’s really critical to continue to do that, because there are so many places in California where it is such an issue and there are animals getting hit on the roadways,” Rebecca Fris, deputy executive director of the California Wildlife Conservation Board, told The Center Square on Friday. “We are working as quickly as we can to get the money out the door that we have to support this issue, and there are many projects that have been planned and not yet implemented, so it would be great to have additional funding in the state from both private and public sources that would actually help us implement and plan new crossings in California.”
There are dozens of completed wildlife crossings in California throughout the state, with dozens more in various stages of planning, according to a database by Wildlands Network. Construction is almost done on the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing above 10 lanes of Highway 101 in Agoura Hills in Los Angeles County. The large crossing is expected to open to wildlife in December and cost California’s taxpayers $77.7 million, according to the project’s website. An additional $37.2 million was paid by private donors.
In other parts of the country with wildlife crossings, wildlife-involved traffic incidents dropped by a 90% to 95% reduction in some cases, Reynolds said. Increasing road safety and lower insurance costs are some of the benefits of wildlife crossings, he added.
“Taking those examples to a state Legislature and saying we should create a program to support these projects, that’s something that people can get behind,” Reynolds said. “All across the country, crossing structures are being built in states big, small, red, blue and everywhere in between. It’s so bipartisan, it’s practically nonpartisan.”
Some Republican politicians in California say the opposite.
“Voters have shown time and time again they demand taxpayer funds only be used to fix infrastructure projects that’ll keep our roads safe and clean,” Assemblymember Laurie Davies, R-Laguna Niguel and vice chair of the Assembly Transportation Committee, told The Center Square on Friday. “I have voted against every attempt to divert gas tax money away from fixing potholes to instead create pathways for animal crossings. Enough is enough. I believe a promise made is a promise kept, and when you tell voters one thing, but attempt to funnel it to something completely unrelated, it’s a slap in the face to Californians.”
Democratic politicians on transportation and wildlife-related committees in the California state legislature did not respond to The Center Square before publication time on Friday. The Department of Transportation, the California State Transportation Agency and the California Transportation Commission did not make anyone available to answer questions on Friday. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife also did not respond.

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