Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing at Liberty Canyon

The  Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, located at Liberty Canyon and the 101 Freeway, is a public-private partnership that has leveraged the expertise and leadership of dozens of organizations and institutions. The core partners include Caltrans, the National Park Service, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains, and the National Wildlife Federation.

In 1990, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy commissioned the study “Critical Wildlife Corridor Habitat Linkage Areas between the Santa Susana Mountains, the Simi Hills and the Santa Monica Mountains.” Furthering Dr. Michael Soule’s earlier work for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area on habitat linkages, the study identified the site of the Liberty Canyon Wildlife Crossing as the choke point necessary to connect the Santa Monica Mountains across the 101 Freeway to the Simi Hills in order to prevent the local mountain lion population from extinction.

At that time, most of the property in this landscape choke point was privately owned, and the future of preserving this critical inter-mountain range habitat linkage was anything but certain. Over the next thirty years, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, and its joint powers partner, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, as well as the National Park Service, systematically acquired much of the private land identified in the 1990 study using voter-approved funds, and permanently protected a critical mass of habitat that will now make it possible to link the mountains with the Wallace Annenberg Wildlife Crossing.

The purpose of the project is to provide a safe and sustainable passage for wildlife across US-101 near Liberty Canyon Road in the City of Agoura Hills that reduces wildlife death and allows for the movement of animals and the exchange of genetic material. Without a safe and sustainable wildlife crossing, movement between these remaining areas of natural habitat is severely restricted and wildlife within the Santa Monica Mountains is essentially trapped.

On April 22, 2022 Governor Gavin Newsom joined dozens of federal, State, and local officials, the project partners, and hundreds of supporters to break ground on the construction of the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing. The bridge linking the mountain ranges over ten lanes of the US-101 Hollywood/Ventura Freeway is expected to be completed in 2025.

Download Map and Graphic about the Liberty Canyon Wildlife Corridor.