DAVID BLACKMON: Don’t Let Newsom’s Butterfly Bridge To Nowhere Kill Effective Animal Conservation

No one can deny that stories about California’s energy and climate looniness never cease to be entertaining, making them a prime topic for mockery. The state’s infamous High Speed Rail system has consumed billions without transporting a single passenger to or from any destination, providing years of fun posts on X, Facebook and Tik-Tok while slamming California taxpayers in the backside.

But a story about a more current bright idea from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office has generated a plethora of parody posts in recent days following a report at the City Journal about what some are calling The Butterfly Bridge to Nowhere.

The Newsom administration broke ground in 2022 on the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, a project intended to serve as an overpass for migrating butterflies and roaming cougars across the 10-lane 101 Freeway in Southern California. How the butterflies are going to figure out the bridge even exists remains a bit of a mystery, but migration bridges for major land mammals like elk, mule deer, antelopes, and big horn sheep are a proven and affordable concept when done right.

Projects like this one succeed in places like Banff, Canada, and states like Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming because they’re data-driven (placed at known migration hotspots), fenced to guide animals (again, not effective for butterflies), and monitored long-term. The wildlife-bridge concept clearly works, and years of monitoring proves it saves lives of both animals and human drivers, as well as taxpayer money on avoided crashes.

But, as so often seems to happen in California, this commendable concept quickly fell prey to incompetence and abuse. At the groundbreaking in 2022, Newsom boasted that the project would cost the low-low price of just $54 million. Never mind that similar projects are executed in other states and Canada for $10-$15 million – the Governor sold this price tag as a bargain to the state’s credulous voters and media. But, of course, that already princely price tag wasn’t the full price – it was just the down payment on the real cost to come.