Groundbreaking set for bridge billed as world's largest wildlife crossing(abc7.com)
abc7.com
Groundbreaking set for bridge billed as world's largest wildlife crossing
https://abc7.com/wildlife-crossing-101-freeway-bridge-groundbreaking/11680134/
12 comments
It’s a different problem in SoCal — there aren’t meese or hardly any large animals to speak of. It’s to try and stitch together zones that are too small to support sufficient genetic diversity for land predators. The car hits are few and far between, so it’s a minor safety issue, but every animal struck is an ecological disaster. The 101 is already extensively fenced for human safety.
Meese? Mice? Mouse? The plural of moose is moose. English sure is weird.
When I lived in Wisconsin, a group of moose were frequently (and humorously) referred to as meese.
We all knew the correct pluralization, which is why using the wrong one was funny. The fact that it annoyed sticklers to proper form was just icing on the cake.
We all knew the correct pluralization, which is why using the wrong one was funny. The fact that it annoyed sticklers to proper form was just icing on the cake.
"If the plural of goose is geese, is the plural of moose, meese?"
If the singular of mice is mouse, what the deuce is the singular of dice?
I drove through Poland a couple of months ago, and was surprised to see quite a few of these on the new highways. Some even had trees on top, so there must be quite a lot of soil there, not a small layer to cover the concrete.
I see them all over Eastern Europe, might be related to EU infrastructure spending contracts.
We've had them in the US for a while. Some of them have webcams: https://www.king5.com/article/tech/science/environment/incre...
I'm curious to hear how these bridges end up affecting wildlife behaviour once everything matures in.
Is the bridge itself territory for any territorial animals? Is it a dangerous bottleneck, where predators have an upper hand? Etc.
Narrow passages between large habitat areas exist in nature, but they're quite rare.
Is the bridge itself territory for any territorial animals? Is it a dangerous bottleneck, where predators have an upper hand? Etc.
Narrow passages between large habitat areas exist in nature, but they're quite rare.
South African here.
We see this sort of thing a lot in our many national parks (namely terrain bottlenecks, particularly around watering holes).
You're quite right about territorial and / or predatory animals exploiting these.
What helps is to keep bush trimmed and to eliminate any dense foliage.
So long as there's clear visibility at and around said bottlenecks, it tends to reduce (but not completely eradicate) the tendency for hunts.
We see this sort of thing a lot in our many national parks (namely terrain bottlenecks, particularly around watering holes).
You're quite right about territorial and / or predatory animals exploiting these.
What helps is to keep bush trimmed and to eliminate any dense foliage.
So long as there's clear visibility at and around said bottlenecks, it tends to reduce (but not completely eradicate) the tendency for hunts.
In NJ they have two wildlife crossings over the roadway next to a wildlife refugee where they also built a huge retaining wall.
They look like county road crossings over the interstate but are completely overgrown with trees and bushes.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wildlife-crossings-creatu_b_1...
They look like county road crossings over the interstate but are completely overgrown with trees and bushes.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wildlife-crossings-creatu_b_1...
I don’t mean to be pessimistic, but I feel this is a typical human development. In that, these designs should have been common, if not required, from the very beginning, but here we are patting ourselves on the back doing it almost decades too late. It’s great that it’s happening though for sure.
I don't know if that is strictly pessimism. It is probably self defeating though.
Sally has been on a diet for two weeks. Already, she looks visibly better. Her face is less puffy, complection has improved, etc. She feels more energetic.
"You see! I told you. Diet is not that hard. You look so much better. It's such a pity that you spent your twenties being a fat slob."
A pat on the back is productive. The above is counterproductive.
Sally has been on a diet for two weeks. Already, she looks visibly better. Her face is less puffy, complection has improved, etc. She feels more energetic.
"You see! I told you. Diet is not that hard. You look so much better. It's such a pity that you spent your twenties being a fat slob."
A pat on the back is productive. The above is counterproductive.
I feel the analogy isn't quite accurate. What you've described is almost strictly a personal matter. Building structures that decimate animal populations and ecosystems is an entirely different matter.
It's just at some point, we gotta question our ability and willingness to double down on narcissism. We build structures and technology that do horrible things to the environment for our own "good" or preference, and then we pat ourselves on the back when we do something about reducing the effects, usually decades later (and usually when it starts to affect us). The lesson learned is that we have got to start asking ourselves about downstream effects of our technology, rather than simply stopping once technology solves the narrow problem it was designed for.
As I mentioned, I do think it's great that these natural bridges are becoming more popular. I sincerely feel the separation we've done to animal populations every time I drive on highways and roads, especially when I see animals that have been killed by cars. The fact that some animals have been able to survive amongst destruction of their habitat is quite amazing. Obviously, many were not able to adapt due to their evolutionary path.
It's just at some point, we gotta question our ability and willingness to double down on narcissism. We build structures and technology that do horrible things to the environment for our own "good" or preference, and then we pat ourselves on the back when we do something about reducing the effects, usually decades later (and usually when it starts to affect us). The lesson learned is that we have got to start asking ourselves about downstream effects of our technology, rather than simply stopping once technology solves the narrow problem it was designed for.
As I mentioned, I do think it's great that these natural bridges are becoming more popular. I sincerely feel the separation we've done to animal populations every time I drive on highways and roads, especially when I see animals that have been killed by cars. The fact that some animals have been able to survive amongst destruction of their habitat is quite amazing. Obviously, many were not able to adapt due to their evolutionary path.
No analogy is perfect.
That said. I think there's a pseudo-principle in here someplace.
Behind that bridge are people, and work those people did. Someone fought for budgets. Someone did wildlife research. Someone overcame planning difficulties. Politicians, scientists, activists, etc.
The sentiments you expressed are negative reinforcers. If enough voices sound like yours, that leads to doing less.
I do think that it's a self defeating pattern in personal, social and public realms.
Do something good = trivialise it; shoulda done more, earlier. You sick. We suck. Negative reinforcement.
Do something bad = comfortable, instinctive negativity. Of course we did bad. We suck. All is as it should be.
It's a pattern of thought and communication that promotes and enables stagnation, and wallowing in bad places.
That said. I think there's a pseudo-principle in here someplace.
Behind that bridge are people, and work those people did. Someone fought for budgets. Someone did wildlife research. Someone overcame planning difficulties. Politicians, scientists, activists, etc.
The sentiments you expressed are negative reinforcers. If enough voices sound like yours, that leads to doing less.
I do think that it's a self defeating pattern in personal, social and public realms.
Do something good = trivialise it; shoulda done more, earlier. You sick. We suck. Negative reinforcement.
Do something bad = comfortable, instinctive negativity. Of course we did bad. We suck. All is as it should be.
It's a pattern of thought and communication that promotes and enables stagnation, and wallowing in bad places.
But some analogies aren't relevant. :)
Taking a retrospective look could in fact be argued to be optimistic. It means we can learn from our past mistakes and do better in the future. In other words, take the idea that we have the capacity to change for the better and not the capacity to get worse. I view the "whelp, this is the best we could do" approach to be pessimistic. A retrospective isn't trivializing anything. It should be: we did something bad, we've corrected for it, don't over congratulate and act like our hands are fully clean, ask ourselves how we can prevent this in the future in other endeavors. We will never be proactive problem solvers of downstream problems created by our immediate solutions as a species if we don't address these ideas and perspectives. We'll just keep rinsing and repeating.
Do you view team retrospectives in industry as "negative reinforcers"?
> If enough voices sound like yours, that leads to doing less.
I highly disagree because you seem to continue to be misinterpreting the "voicing". It isn't about being negative. It's about being honest.
Anyway, this is gone down a diversion. Just trying to provide a perspective of reframing in that we have the capacity, at least I hope we do, to prevent the need for these scrambles in the future. For the third time, it's really great this is being done and hopefully propagates to other areas that likely desperately need them.
Edit: It should be clear, but I'm referring to we as a collective. And it's almost always more expensive and difficult to retroactively fix things. I'm saying take this good development, which it is, and proactively apply its ideas to new projects.
Taking a retrospective look could in fact be argued to be optimistic. It means we can learn from our past mistakes and do better in the future. In other words, take the idea that we have the capacity to change for the better and not the capacity to get worse. I view the "whelp, this is the best we could do" approach to be pessimistic. A retrospective isn't trivializing anything. It should be: we did something bad, we've corrected for it, don't over congratulate and act like our hands are fully clean, ask ourselves how we can prevent this in the future in other endeavors. We will never be proactive problem solvers of downstream problems created by our immediate solutions as a species if we don't address these ideas and perspectives. We'll just keep rinsing and repeating.
Do you view team retrospectives in industry as "negative reinforcers"?
> If enough voices sound like yours, that leads to doing less.
I highly disagree because you seem to continue to be misinterpreting the "voicing". It isn't about being negative. It's about being honest.
Anyway, this is gone down a diversion. Just trying to provide a perspective of reframing in that we have the capacity, at least I hope we do, to prevent the need for these scrambles in the future. For the third time, it's really great this is being done and hopefully propagates to other areas that likely desperately need them.
Edit: It should be clear, but I'm referring to we as a collective. And it's almost always more expensive and difficult to retroactively fix things. I'm saying take this good development, which it is, and proactively apply its ideas to new projects.
Your whole analysis is based on the false premise that the “we” who did the shitty thing is the same “we” who built the bridge.
You’re just some person on the side shitting on people who didn’t do things in the first place without encouraging the people who are actually doing good. You’re not helpful, you’re just dumping negativity around the actual good going on.
This article, “look at this cool solar farm Sally built that made her community net negative on carbon.”
You, “not to be pessimistic, but this is just fixing shit that was done before.”
You’re just some person on the side shitting on people who didn’t do things in the first place without encouraging the people who are actually doing good. You’re not helpful, you’re just dumping negativity around the actual good going on.
This article, “look at this cool solar farm Sally built that made her community net negative on carbon.”
You, “not to be pessimistic, but this is just fixing shit that was done before.”
Judging our past selves by what we know now isn't useful.
I know that these are common in Germany, going over the Autobahn (ableit smaller bridges), such as:
52.1347152, 8.1685640
52.1347152, 8.1685640
I always wondered what the justification for something like this[0] was. It's not really connecting two natural areas, and seems like with all the internal infrastructure like alarm systems, lighting, and fans that it would be wildly more expensive than just building the bridges and overpasses.
0: 49.972706, 8.272086
0: 49.972706, 8.272086
I had trouble parsing the headline and first sentence of this article.
> Groundbreaking set for bridge billed...
And
> Groundbreaking is set for next month...
It only made sense once I listened to the video:
> The groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled for next month...
Ohhh.. "groundbreaking" is used as a noun. I would write that as "ground breaking". "Groundbreaking" is an adjective.
In the UK we have bat bridges: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bridge
> Groundbreaking set for bridge billed...
And
> Groundbreaking is set for next month...
It only made sense once I listened to the video:
> The groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled for next month...
Ohhh.. "groundbreaking" is used as a noun. I would write that as "ground breaking". "Groundbreaking" is an adjective.
In the UK we have bat bridges: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bridge
This is what's called a garden-path sentence!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence
"Andrew Jackson, in the main foyer of his White House, had a big block of cheese..."
This was the racist maps episode, right?
Yes! I miss that show. Really could use the optimism.
I loved the first few seasons, but now it seems like such a liberal wet dream.
how? when re watching it does not feel liberal to me. In fact they celebrate this fake moderation and cooperation that doesn't exist (scotus episode). and not very liberal socially. the way they treat lgbtq issues is an example that stands out to me from how far we have evolved in 15 years or whatever
RIP Pluie
This is great. The only thing that bothers me is the price tag. Seems the US is either neglecting infrastructure or building in super expensive ways. They should have looked into way cheaper approaches that can actually be deployed on larger scale without breaking the bank.
Colorado has a bunch of these, albeit on a smaller scale. Colorado Parks & Wildlife released a study on the effectiveness of these.
https://cpw.state.co.us/hwy9
> The research documented 112,678 mule deer successful passages through or over the seven crossing structures. Combined with an overall success rate of 96% of mule deer utilizing the structures, these results indicate that the project has been highly effective in accommodating mule deer movement.
https://cpw.state.co.us/hwy9
> The research documented 112,678 mule deer successful passages through or over the seven crossing structures. Combined with an overall success rate of 96% of mule deer utilizing the structures, these results indicate that the project has been highly effective in accommodating mule deer movement.
I don’t usually watch videos on news articles, but I was surprised by how concise yet informative this one was.
I learned everything I wanted to know about this story in 20 seconds. Impressive.
I learned everything I wanted to know about this story in 20 seconds. Impressive.
Get tunnelling cheap and efficient, and all future roads can be fully underground.
Then we can leave the surface space for more important things, like natural spaces and humans.
Then we can leave the surface space for more important things, like natural spaces and humans.
You make tunneling cheap and easy.
no pictures in the article, weird.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Wallis+Annenberg+Wildlife+Cr...
https://www.google.com/search?q=Wallis+Annenberg+Wildlife+Cr...
There is indeed a picture, which is a still from the video in the article, and in fact, the still from the video and the video and article are in the top results from your link.
I am 100% for projects like this. My question is partly just out of curiosity and partly (maybe) because the realities of capitalism has made me skeptical of what look to be purely altruistic initiatives.
Apart from the animals, the motorists, and the contractors who will build this, who else stands to gain? Someone must be expecting some huge savings or returns considering the $90 million price tag, right?
Other than that, this news gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.
Apart from the animals, the motorists, and the contractors who will build this, who else stands to gain? Someone must be expecting some huge savings or returns considering the $90 million price tag, right?
Other than that, this news gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.
If you think purely money orientated:
Increasing the biodiversity raises the attractivness of the area for people to live in (higher prices for land) and tourists to visit. So among other buisness opportunities, more taxes (in the long run).
Increasing the biodiversity raises the attractivness of the area for people to live in (higher prices for land) and tourists to visit. So among other buisness opportunities, more taxes (in the long run).
[deleted]
> who else stands to gain
The politicians who ran on being "green" and want to "save" the climate. Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure the rest of us who are sane would rather have more public transit or more lanes on the highway with that 90 million.
The politicians who ran on being "green" and want to "save" the climate. Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure the rest of us who are sane would rather have more public transit or more lanes on the highway with that 90 million.
Even more lanes? The highway already has 10 lanes.
More lanes on highways has been proven to at best have no effect on traffic and at worst just make traffic worse overall.
No it hasn’t. “Induced demand” is an idiotic phrase for a standard supply and demand curve where the price in this case is just time spent on the road. There is a limited number of people who want to drive on the road at a particular time and if you build to that, there will be no more demand. If you’re not convinced, just look at the empty highways at night.
“Building a hospital in our town just caused more hospital visits. Stop building hospitals!”
“Building a hospital in our town just caused more hospital visits. Stop building hospitals!”
> If you’re not convinced, just look at the empty highways at night.
This part threw me off because it seemed to contradict your argument. But I’ll try to get past that.
What your saying here is that demand for roads will always be fixed at X cars per minute between 7am to 9am, for example. So if a road between a city and a suburb was built to handle 1.5 * X cars per minute, then there would be no traffic jam between the two places from 7am to 9am.
But that’s assuming this new capacity won’t encourage city dwellers to move out into the suburb especially if the latter is cheaper, has more access to greenery, etc.
In addition, there could be commuters who, realizing that said road now has greater capacity, will start commuting within the 8am-9am period instead of earlier/later because it’s more convenient.
In both cases, wouldn’t that, in effect, be a case of induced demand?
This part threw me off because it seemed to contradict your argument. But I’ll try to get past that.
What your saying here is that demand for roads will always be fixed at X cars per minute between 7am to 9am, for example. So if a road between a city and a suburb was built to handle 1.5 * X cars per minute, then there would be no traffic jam between the two places from 7am to 9am.
But that’s assuming this new capacity won’t encourage city dwellers to move out into the suburb especially if the latter is cheaper, has more access to greenery, etc.
In addition, there could be commuters who, realizing that said road now has greater capacity, will start commuting within the 8am-9am period instead of earlier/later because it’s more convenient.
In both cases, wouldn’t that, in effect, be a case of induced demand?
> “Building a hospital in our town just caused more hospital visits. Stop building hospitals!”
People don’t walk into hospitals in 100+ square foot bubble suits for fun
> There is a limited number of people who want to drive on the road at a particular time and if you build to that, there will be no more demand. If you’re not convinced, just look at the empty highways at night.
Do you realize you just described the importance of recognizing induced demand? If you just ‘build roads to capacity’(and what even is ‘capacity? 0 traffic?), you end up with ‘cities’ that are just miles of parking lots with 10+ parking spaces for every person. You end up with highways that cost literally billions to build, billions to maintain and billions to extend every few years as the new peak amount of cars gets higher.
People don’t walk into hospitals in 100+ square foot bubble suits for fun
> There is a limited number of people who want to drive on the road at a particular time and if you build to that, there will be no more demand. If you’re not convinced, just look at the empty highways at night.
Do you realize you just described the importance of recognizing induced demand? If you just ‘build roads to capacity’(and what even is ‘capacity? 0 traffic?), you end up with ‘cities’ that are just miles of parking lots with 10+ parking spaces for every person. You end up with highways that cost literally billions to build, billions to maintain and billions to extend every few years as the new peak amount of cars gets higher.
> People don’t walk into hospitals in 100+ square foot bubble suits for fun
You missed the point or don’t understand what induced demand implies.
> Do you realize you just described the importance of recognizing induced demand?
“Induced demand” is just supply and demand, there is nothing special. You didn’t understand supply and demand in the first place if you think this isn’t regular supply and demand curves.
Make a new passenger train that goes from LA to Vegas that takes 16 hours. Check the ridership. Now make it take 2 hours and check again.
Neither train “induced” the demand. It was already there because people travel between the cities (see the flights).
People who hide behind “induced demand” as an excuse just don’t want to admit that the demand is already there and they are just NIMBYs who don’t care about lower income people with families who need to commute for work. That’s fine, but at least admit it.
You missed the point or don’t understand what induced demand implies.
> Do you realize you just described the importance of recognizing induced demand?
“Induced demand” is just supply and demand, there is nothing special. You didn’t understand supply and demand in the first place if you think this isn’t regular supply and demand curves.
Make a new passenger train that goes from LA to Vegas that takes 16 hours. Check the ridership. Now make it take 2 hours and check again.
Neither train “induced” the demand. It was already there because people travel between the cities (see the flights).
People who hide behind “induced demand” as an excuse just don’t want to admit that the demand is already there and they are just NIMBYs who don’t care about lower income people with families who need to commute for work. That’s fine, but at least admit it.
Animats(1)
Needless to say, hitting a moose at highway speeds ends poorly not just for the moose but for the occupants of the vehicle as well.