NPR

Our roads are killing wildlife. The new infrastructure law aims to help

For the first time, the federal government is making a sizeable investment in wildlife road crossings. The goal is to help slow extinctions, and also protect people from animal collisions.
A mountain lion photographed with a motion sensor camera in the Verdugo Mountains overlooking the city lights of Los Angeles. New money for wildlife crossings will help animals whose habitat has been cut by roadways.

Just outside of Los Angeles, in one of the most human-modified parts of the planet, a rare coastal ecosystem is being pinched against the Pacific Coast. The mountain range is home to one of the highest concentrations of threatened and endangered species in the country.

And some are suffocating.

For the better part of the last century, the Santa Monica Mountains have been effectively cut off from the larger world, hemmed in by seawater and sprawl. Highway 101, carved across the range's northern foothills, "has become this impenetrable wall for wildlife," said Beth Pratt, California regional executive director for the National Wildlife Federation. "And both plants and animals need movement to be resilient and survive."

This spring, Southern California

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