SANTA CRUZ – Sarah Newkirk, head of the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County, has found herself in the unlikely business of building superhighways.
Not giant, multi-lane interchanges and flyovers.
The Land Trust’s executive director, armed with a boatload of well-earned environmental credentials, has become a champion of constructing superhighways for mountain lions and other wildlife who become isolated and unable to migrate freely through open space sliced up by our busy highways.
“Our entire highway system was built without a single thought as to how wildlife would move across it to access their habitat,” Sarah said. “Connectivity is crucial for survival of the mountain lion.”
The connectivity work of the Land Trust and other environmental groups is part of a recent movement in California to build new infrastructure – overpasses, underpasses, trails and bridges – for wildlife to travel with greater ease and safety between areas of habitat.
Known as wildlife corridors, Sarah and other environmentalists, in addition to state leaders such as Gov. Newsom, are pushing connectivity infrastructure as key to protecting both people and animals.
Of the $1.1 trillion federal infrastructure package passed by Congress and signed by President Biden in 2021, more than $350 million is marked for constructing wildlife crossings.
These are significant engineering projects that require organizations like the Land Trust to partner with heavy civil construction companies and California Department of Transportation to get off the ground.
“This is a big infrastructure project for the purpose of protecting wildlife,” Sarah said. “We need a construction partner to help us build the infrastructure needed to protect our endangered wildlife and to create access to our open spaces.”
California’s first wildlife crossing began construction on Highway 17 at Laurel Curve in March – a public-private partnership between the Land Trust, Caltrans, Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission and Graniterock as the contractor.
This spot is considered crucial for the mountain lion’s safe passage through the Santa Cruz Mountains as 65,000 cars travel the steep and windy highway daily.
The $11 million Highway 17 wildlife crossing project has been in the works by the Land Trust and other stakeholders for well over a decade with the necessary land acquisitions and funding finally coming together in 2021.
The Laurel Curve undercrossing will connect the nearly 460 acres of land on both sides of the highway that have been preserved in conservation easements by the Land Trust. The roadway at this location is built over a large natural drainage, making the location ideal for constructing an undercrossing.
Graniterock is essentially punching a hole under the highway and building an 80-foot bridge for animals to walk under to reach the other side of the Santa Cruz Mountains.
The Liberty Canyon wildlife corridor project in Southern California kicked off in Santa Monica in April.
Other wildlife crossings are on the Land Trust’s map, including one on Highway 101 near Aromas to connect the Santa Cruz Mountains with the Gabilan Range in the south.
“Highways and urbanization have broken up what used to be large swaths of habitat, leaving smaller unconnected areas that don’t provide enough space for animals to hunt or find mates outside their own family,” Sarah said.
Sarah’s environmental career began on a side street of nature’s superhighway.
She became passionate about science and the outdoors growing up in upstate New York, surrounded by farms and the Adirondack Mountains. She was always happiest playing outside and exploring her grandparent’s farm.
The New York native might have been a musician if her mother hadn’t insisted reasonable people don’t study music when she left for Ohio’s Oberlin College.
Sarah received biology and music degrees at Oberlin.
After college, she headed to State University of New York for a master’s in marine environmental science, followed by law school at Pace University in Westchester.
After attending a lecture by founders of the Environmental Defense Fund in 2000, she became thrilled at the possibility of holding the government accountable in protecting wildlife, open space and the environment at large.
With a law degree, environmental education and deep-rooted passion for all things nature, Sarah found her calling by blending the three.
Sarah’s career has been spent largely at the Natural Resource Defense Council and the Nature Conservancy working on issues such as sea level rise and climate change before joining the Land Trust in 2021.
She was offered the nonprofit’s top position when former executive director Stephen Slade retired.
Living with her husband and two sons in the redwoods of the Santa Cruz Mountains, Sarah is dedicated to serving as a bridge between what’s best for nature, wildlife and people.
“My vision for the future is that we become so good at the policy and funding for this infrastructure that brings people and wildlife to our wildlands that we won’t be playing catchup anymore,” she said.
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