I  have been asked so many times, why the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing was built in this particular spot in Agoura Hills, so I thought I’d share a little about it.

Every time someone asks, it reminds me of that hilarious 2012 radio call in  from a woman who was upset about deer crossing the road.

Her solution? Move the deer crossing sign somewhere else so the deer would cross there instead! Listen to the call here

As funny as that sounds, wildlife crossings don’t really work that way.

There’s actually a very good reason this particular location was chosen. Liberty Canyon is one of the last places where large areas of protected natural land still connect on both sides of the 101 Freeway.

Here’s what makes this spot so important:

• It’s a natural wildlife corridor. The protected land on either side connects the Santa Monica Mountains with the Simi Hills. Unfortunately, the 101 has cut off much of that connection.

• Mountain lions desperately need it. Research by the National Park Service showed that mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains are becoming increasingly isolated. With so little opportunity to mix with other mountain lion populations, inbreeding has become a serious threat to their long-term survival.

• Wildlife were already trying to cross here. Animals, including mountain lions, have been killed trying to make their way across this stretch of the freeway. This wasn’t an arbitrary location. It was already part of their natural route.

• It took years of planning. Conservation groups and public agencies spent decades protecting land in this area to keep development from closing off one of the last opportunities to reconnect these habitats.

So the next time someone wonders why they didn’t build it somewhere else, there’s your answer. You can’t exactly tell wildlife where they should travel and expect them to cooperate!

The crossing is really about giving animals back a connection that existed long before we built a freeway through the middle of it.