Can California do anything right? The failed bullet train. Failure to prevent wildfires. Failure to rebuild after the Palisades fire.
Now we have the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing (WAWC).
Newsom broke ground on the crossing in 2022 to help protect wildlife and people in Southern California, with an estimated cost of $92 million.
At the time, the state committed $54 million for the project while Newsom promised to “complete the job within another $10 million.”
Officials projected completion by 2025.
It’s March 2026, and no one has finished the bridge. Why not? Because Trump, of course! From City Journal:
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.”
Um, Trump has only been in office since January 2025. What happened between 2022 and mid-January 2025?
The California Transportation Commission handed the project $18.8 million after Pratt’s announcement.
That means the project’s budget hit $114 million, with $77 million coming from taxpayers.
Look, I’m all for these wildlife crossings. It saves animals and people by preventing them from crossing highways where cars travel at high speeds.
Many of those locations lack street lamps, hampering drivers’ visibility at night.
But holy moly.
The latest press release, issued on February 2, claimed California is “closing in on completing” the bridge.
Uh, okay. Great. You’re still over budget and a year behind schedule.
[Featured image via YouTube]
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