Rim of the Valley Wildlife Corridors: Sepulveda Pass via Interstate 405

The Sepulveda Pass is represented as Sepulveda road and Interstate 405 cresting through a low point in the Santa Monica Mountains connecting the San Fernando Valley with Santa Monica, Hollywood and Southern Los Angeles. Interstate 405 is widely considered one of the busiest freeways in the United States and in many cases the entire world. It presents a formidable 10 lane wide barrier that at all times in the day is heavily trafficked. From the afternoon rush hour when thousands of cars, trucks and freight are at a crawl to the dead of night when vehicles travel at speeds of excess of 65 miles an hour up and downhill, the freeway seemed like an impenetrable obstacle for wildlife.
That was until an unlikely mountain lion arrived in Griffith park sometime around February 2012 and started causing a ruckus, preying upon the local deer population and giving hikers a scare. Up until this point it was thought near impossible for a predator of that size to be able to ford the colossal Interstate 405, yet here was proof of the uncanny instincts of the apex predator driving the young male, dubbed P-22, to a new home range and food source. Thus the need for a wildlife corridor in the Sepulveda pass, as heavily urbanized as it is, became apparent in the least likely of ways; the success of the apex predator crossing one of the most formidable urban barriers to find a new home range.