Right now, let's say good morning too. California's regional executive director for the National Wildlife Federation, Best Pratt, Good morning, Bet. Thanks for getting us up early with us today.
Oh, no problem, thanks for having me.
So we're excited because construction for the wildlife crossing over the one oh one Freeway in a Gore Hills is progressing and entering a new phase today.
Yeah, we're really excited. I'm up early, not just for you, but we are about to put the first soil on the top of the one oh one structure, which to me is a really actually emotional milestone because so far it's been concrete, twenty six million pounds of concrete for that one oh one structure. But this is the first kind of natural layer. You know, I can now envision
a Mountainlin's pop print in it. So getting my hand in that soil and being able to toss it on the bridge and know that next coming is plants and habitat, that's a pretty amazing milestone. Yeah.
So, now, Beth, is how much are you going to be throwing onto the bridge eventually? You said twenty six million tons of concrete? How much dirt's going on there?
You know, that's a really good question I don't know the answer to. But it's a lot. This is this, Yeah, a lot. How's that for scientific? It is a full acre of habitat on top of that bridge, and that
we are actually creating, right, there was nothing there. I do know that the top soil is about nine inches in height, and then the subsoil, which actually is what we'll be tossing on would they start today, it's about nine inches, So you're talking about, you know about across the entire habitat, you're talking about eighteen inches of soil, which is a lot from below that. We have aggregate, we have drainage layers. It's it's you know, people ask,
you know what sometimes why this is taking so long. Well, it's not just a bridge for cars. To create an ecosystem on top took a lot of engineering, you know, such as of waterproofing and drainage layers, so that you could pretty much create a habitat.
Okay, and then once you get all the dirt on there, then you're going to be planting things, right.
Yeah. I think this is the most fascinating part of the whole project. Even though I have a black thumb
and you wouldn't want me in charge of this. But we have a whole native plant nursery operation that literally we started like five or six years ago with just people coming out gathering samples of like the microbi microbiology of the soil of the fungus and started gathering over a million hyperlocal seeds that now if you look, are now full fledged plants and those will be starting to go on in May, Okay.
And then we're still looking at an opening data when it's going to be completed still early next year, is that right?
Sometime in twenty twenty six, the weather did delay us a little bit. We had two record rainy springs, which unfortunately hit at bad times. When you're poorn, you can't have soupy soil doesn't work real well. But we're looking at twenty twenty six and what is next is we have to relocate there or bury There is a utility line in between the freeway and a Gora road and those utility lines will be buried, which will actually help
with fire resiliency. And then we start extending the structure over a Goer road and then put the soil on that, plants on that and we are open for business and probably mid to late twenty twenty six.
Okay, how exciting. Okay, So I want to ask you a question because we've talked about this before, but just you're building this massive crossing. It's an acre in size over the freeway, and you and I have talked before about if you build it, they will come, meaning that if you build this crossing, the wildlife will find it. How do they find it because in the grand scope of things along the whole freeway, it's a very narrow passage.
Yeah. Yeah, and that's actually why they will find it or have already found it. We know from the National Park Service research, you know, over twenty years of collaring mountain lines and bobcats and coyotes and other animals that they're trying to cross here. If you look on a map like a Google map, you can see that the green space funnels right to this location, kind of an hour glass shape. It's the last sixteen hundred feet in that entire region on the one oh one where there's
protected open space on both sides. So they're already trying to cross here. They just get to the freeway and are like uh huh and turn around because I'll tell you. I've stood there at two am, and I wouldn't even try it. You know, the one on one just never slows. But what we what we also do, and we know from decades of wildlife crossing science, is we put up
what we call exclusionary fencing. So there will be fencing on about two miles on either side of the freeway that actually cuts off their options and leads them to it as well.
Okay, oh, I love that. Okay, Well, I hope that we get to talk to you again soon, Beth. A very exciting day. We're a step closer to giving animals safe passage and that's big stuff.
You know, it's hopeful stuff. I think we all need hope these days, and to me, this is a hopeful project. Thanks for having me, all right, Thank you. Bet.
That's California Regional executive director of the National Wildlife Federation, Beth Pratt.