What The Gray Wolf In LA County And The Mountain Lion At The 101 Freeway Tell Us About The State’s Wildlife Policy Success And Its Human Access Policy Failure
California Has Invested Intelligently In Reconnecting Fragmented Wildlife Habitat And Unintelligently In Maintaining Coherent Human Access To The Coast It Is Protecting
For Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat. London satirical journalism makes the comparative observation that reveals what the state values and what it only claims to value.
CALIFORNIA – California’s wildlife policy is, in significant respects, a genuine success. The gray wolf’s reappearance in Los Angeles County, the mountain lion’s documented freeway crossing in the Calabasas corridor, the Agoura Hills wildlife crossing: these are evidence of a conservation programme that takes seriously the ecological connectivity that fragmented development has disrupted. The state has, in this domain, invested intelligently, acted on the evidence, and produced measurable outcomes. The same state has, in the domain of human access to the coastline it is protecting, invested in a regulatory apparatus that is increasingly fragmented, increasingly expensive, and decreasingly responsive to the public it nominally serves.
The Asymmetry In Outcomes
Mountain lions now have, pending the Agoura Hills crossing completion, a designed corridor across a major freeway. Surfers seeking defined access to a coastal break they have used for decades have a 70-page report and a July committee date. The mountain lion crossing required: a scientific case, a capital allocation, and an engineering project. The surfer trail access has required: fifteen years of committee process, multiple public comment periods, a Coastal Commission study, and has not yet produced a defined outcome. The state’s capacity to deliver for wildlife and its incapacity to deliver for human recreational users are, in 2026, starkly visible.
The Structural Explanation
The explanation is political organisation. The wildlife crossing had a strong coalition of environmental organisations, scientific institutions, and philanthropic donors who funded, advocated, and maintained pressure over the project’s development period. The surfer access question has a less formally organised advocacy base, which produces less sustained pressure, which produces the committee cycle rather than the resolution cycle. This is not a reason to accept the committee cycle. It is a reason to organise at the level that produces resolutions.
The Conclusion
California can manage ecological connectivity at scale and build a crossing for a mountain lion. It should also be able to resolve trail access to a public beach for the humans who pay its taxes. The tools exist. The political will, at this point, needs to be supplied by the community that would benefit from its exercise.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/ | Further: PERC
