The reality is even more ridiculous than the headline. The whole reason for this bridge is so that a handful of isolated and extremely inbred mountain lions in the Malibu area can breed with normal mountain lions on the other side of the freeway to diversify their genetics.
One of these inbred mountain lions killed my dog in my backyard on a college campus in 2022. The National Park Service had a tracking collar on the animal and knew where it was at all times. They didn’t give any warning to the college or anyone else. After this happened, they only admitted it was their animal after a reporter questioned them.
The animal was so inbred that its father was also its grandfather, and then it mated with its father/grandfather.
Mountain lions are not endangered in California in the slightest. There are actually too many of them in this area, causing them to kill each other over territory.
The NPS catches all these animals every few years to replace the batteries in their tracking collars. They could literally just drive them to the other side of the freeway in a pickup.
The mountain lion that killed my dog was hit by a car and killed a few months later. What a waste.