The Wildlife Crossing CLIPI Helped Make Possible
The Wildlife Crossing CLIPI Helped Make Possible
Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing
Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing
It was recently announced that after years of planning, the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing is set to open this December.
The crossing runs over the 101 Freeway and will be the world's largest wildlife bridge, designed to restore genetic diversity to Southern California's mountain lion population and allow wildlife to move safely across one of the busiest freeways in the country.
What most people don't know is that the wildlife corridors this crossing connects provide strong legal protections decades ago through litigation by CLIPI.
Beginning in the 1970s, CLIPI challenged LA County's 1973 General Plan for failing to adequately protect its open space resources, including 61 identified Significant Ecological Areas (SEAs) encompassing more than 200,000 acres.
The case - Coalition for LA Planning in the Public Interest v. LA County Board of Supervisors - resulted in an injunction protecting those lands and ultimately a new General Plan with extensive SEA protections.
The battles didn't end there. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, development projects threatened to cut through the very corridors those protections were designed to preserve.
In the Santa Susana Mountains, a residential development near the I-118 and Iverson Road would have walled off SEAs 20 and 21, blocking a major wildlife corridor used by mountain lions to cross the freeway. CLIPI opposed the project through years of administrative proceedings. The corridor was ultimately dedicated to the public and now leads directly to the Iverson Road underpass into the Simi Hills.
In the Santa Monica Mountains, two large projects near where the I-101 crosses Palo Camado SEA threatened habitat on both sides of the freeway.
CLIPI successfully opposed both during administrative proceedings, protecting the corridors immediately adjacent to where the new wildlife crossing will now stand.
Without that legal work spanning two decades, the corridors the new crossing relies on would not exist.
The Annenberg crossing is a triumph of vision, engineering, and philanthropy.
It is also the product of legal work done quietly, decades earlier, by people who understood that protecting open space today means protecting possibility for generations to come.
More on CLIPI's land use and open space cases at clipi.org.
It was recently announced that after years of planning, the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing is set to open this December.
The crossing runs over the 101 Freeway and will be the world's largest wildlife bridge, designed to restore genetic diversity to Southern California's mountain lion population and allow wildlife to move safely across one of the busiest freeways in the country.
What most people don't know is that the wildlife corridors this crossing connects provide strong legal protections decades ago through litigation by CLIPI.
Beginning in the 1970s, CLIPI challenged LA County's 1973 General Plan for failing to adequately protect its open space resources, including 61 identified Significant Ecological Areas (SEAs) encompassing more than 200,000 acres.
The case - Coalition for LA Planning in the Public Interest v. LA County Board of Supervisors - resulted in an injunction protecting those lands and ultimately a new General Plan with extensive SEA protections.
The battles didn't end there. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, development projects threatened to cut through the very corridors those protections were designed to preserve.
In the Santa Susana Mountains, a residential development near the I-118 and Iverson Road would have walled off SEAs 20 and 21, blocking a major wildlife corridor used by mountain lions to cross the freeway. CLIPI opposed the project through years of administrative proceedings. The corridor was ultimately dedicated to the public and now leads directly to the Iverson Road underpass into the Simi Hills.
In the Santa Monica Mountains, two large projects near where the I-101 crosses Palo Camado SEA threatened habitat on both sides of the freeway.
CLIPI successfully opposed both during administrative proceedings, protecting the corridors immediately adjacent to where the new wildlife crossing will now stand.
Without that legal work spanning two decades, the corridors the new crossing relies on would not exist.
The Annenberg crossing is a triumph of vision, engineering, and philanthropy.
It is also the product of legal work done quietly, decades earlier, by people who understood that protecting open space today means protecting possibility for generations to come.
More on CLIPI's land use and open space cases at clipi.org.
Category
News
Written by
Carlyle W. Hall Jr.
Co-Founder, CLIPI
Published
Category
News
Written by
Carlyle W. Hall Jr.
Co-Founder, CLIPI
Published
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