SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
wildlife
In an Era of Hardening Borders, Wildlife Corridors Bridge Peoples and Species
From Costa Rica to Colorado, wildlife corridors have been about the connections people make when they care about animal mobility.
Jun 14, 2026
Driving on the Interamerican Highway from Monteverde Biological Reserve to Rincón de la Vieja National Park, I couldn’t help but notice a series of rope bridges that crossed the six lanes of traffic. Each crossing structure featured traffic warning signs with silhouette images of monkeys or sloths as nonstop flows of diesel semitrucks and electric cars zoomed by.
Costa Rica is known for its protected areas, which cover one-third of the country and function as core zones for conservation, but the “green republic” should also be recognized for its corridors. What started as an NGO effort in the 2000s when organizations like Kids Saving The Rainforest started installing aerial bridges to improve habitat connectivity later became national policy with a 2024 presidential decree requiring electrical companies to build crossing structures so that animals like howler monkeys and kinkajous avoided electrocution from using power lines. These monkey bridges also keep tropical rainforest more intact for mobile creatures.
Beyond Central America, wildlife corridors are popular in the western United States. According to recent surveys from the Environment America Research and Policy Center and the Pew Charitable Trust, respondents approve creating more wildlife crossings at rates of 85-90%. And that support spans the political spectrum. In March 2026, the Idaho State Legislature passed Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 124, officially supporting the development of wildlife crossing infrastructure, such as highway overpasses and underpasses, to reduce animal-vehicle collisions. In December 2026, California’s Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing is set to be completed across 10 lanes of Los Angeles freeway, making it the largest structure in the world.
Wildlife corridors could receive a financial boost by the bipartisan BUILD America 250 bill, considered by US House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee this week. If passed, it would increase funding for the Federal Highway Administration’s very popular Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program (WCPP) to $80 million annually ($400 million total). The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act allocated $350 million to 35 projects across 30 states, but demand far exceeded with $500 million in requests.
Today, the benefits of conserving wildlife corridors might be just as much about the social as the biological.
If we’re living in a worldwide golden age for wildlife corridors, where did this idea come from? I trace the origins of this dominant conservation strategy in my new book, Borders of Biodiversity: How Gray Wolves, Monarch Butterflies, and Giant Sequoia Transformed Large Landscape Conservation, published by University of North Carolina Press.
In the 1970s and 1980s, new technologies provided windows into animal mobility. For wolves, radio- and satellite- telemetry allowed US biologist Diane Boyd and Canadian biologist Paul Paquet to track the interchange of dispersing juveniles along the Rockies. For example, Boyd collared wolf #8551, named Kay, west of Glacier National Park; the wolf turned up six months later dead after it was legally shot near Pouce Coupe, British Columbia. The 600-mile movement northward was interesting scientifically because it was two-thirds of the way to the Yukon Territory, but Kay’s movement also had major conservation implications. Wildlife corridors facilitated wolf dispersals; transborder dispersals could facilitate wolf recovery under the Endangered Species Act.
In the 1990s, wildlife corridors were thought of as proactive tools against habitat fragmentation. Responding to Boyd and Paquet’s work, conservationists in Alberta, British Columbia, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming created the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative in 1993 to keep core areas—like Yellowstone National Park or Banff National Park—connected. Projects included lobbying the Canadian government to build wildlife overpasses and underpasses along the Trans-Canada Highway, which Y2Y founder Harvey Locke called the “Berlin Wall of Biodiversity” for its high rate of wolf and elk fatalities. Or investing in predator-deterrence tools like range riding and electrified fladry fencing for ranching communities so wolves and grizzlies could use rural spaces as biological passageways.
By the 2000s, however, wildlife corridors were also understood to help with climate adaptation in a warming world. A scientific meta-analysis documented that of 4,000 animals recently tracked, almost three-quarters of them shifted their ranges to cooler lands or waters. Terrestrial species, on average, were moving 12 miles (or 20 kilometers) every decade toward the poles. Animals relocate to adapt.
Today, the benefits of conserving wildlife corridors might be just as much about the social as the biological. In 2012, Ben Bobowski of Rocky Mountain National Park and Yaxine María Arias Núñez of Santa Elena Biological Reserve created a series of personnel exchanges between the two protected areas called the Naturalmente Juntos-Naturally Together Project. Their connection was based on bird banding studies that revealed 150 bird species, like yellow warblers, migrated along the Continental Divide between Colorado and Costa Rica. In 2015, Rocky and Santa Elena entered a formal sistering agreement.
From Costa Rica to Colorado, wildlife corridors have been about the connections people make when they care about animal mobility. In an era of border-hardening nationalism, corridors can help people of different nationalities facilitate solidarities among shared species.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Thousands March in Albania After PM Says Pristine Land 'Belongs' to Kushner-Backed Group
"One week later, we are still here, stronger than yesterday," said one group opposing a proposed luxury resort project supported by Jared Kushner.
Jun 08, 2026
Albanians took to the streets in droves for the eighth consecutive day on Sunday to protest a proposed $1.6 billion luxury resort complex backed by US President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, one of several investors in the project, which opponents say is both corrupt and disastrous for wetlands and wildlife.
"One week later, we are still here, stronger than yesterday," said the Albanian Ornithological Society, a leading critic of the proposed development. "Millions around the world are united in one voice for nature, for justice, and for the protection of what belongs to everyone, standing for every protected area in Albania."
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama has vocally defended the project amid mounting public backlash, saying in a recent interview that the land marked for development "belongs to the investors," not the Albanian people.
Rama also criticized the thousands of people who have turned out to protest the luxury hotel project as well as international media coverage of the demonstrations, saying that "there is no chance" that "the projects in Albania will be defined by street protests."
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama admits Jared Kushner’s new private island will be exclusively for the elite.
He says the land no longer belongs to the Albanian people and is now under the control of Jared Kushner and his investors.
"The aim is to build the most exclusive."… pic.twitter.com/95IM0YX6xI
— Shadow of Ezra (@ShadowofEzra) June 7, 2026
Demonstrators, many raising pink flamingo cutouts to decry the project's expected impacts on the vulnerable bird and other wildlife, have demanded cancellation of the resort project and Rama's resignation, accusing him of steamrolling environmental concerns to bolster the country's tourism industry and curry favor with the Trump administration. Kushner currently works for the administration as a "special peace envoy."
"We are stronger than your bulldozers," chanted demonstrators over the weekend.
Thousands of Albanians took to the streets of Tirana in the largest protest this week against a plan by a company linked to Trump's son-in-law to build a luxury resort in an environmentally sensitive area pic.twitter.com/aJaKz3ju0A
— Reuters (@Reuters) June 7, 2026
As The New York Times reported last year, Rama heads the government committee that gave "Kushner and his business partners the right to move ahead with accelerated negotiations to build the luxury resort on a 111-acre section of the 2.2-square-mile island of Sazan that will be connected by ferry to the mainland."
"Mr. Kushner’s Affinity Partners, a private equity company backed with about $4.6 billion in money mostly from Saudi Arabia and other Middle East sovereign wealth funds, is pursuing the Albania project along with Asher Abehsera, a real estate executive that Mr. Kushner has previously teamed up with to build projects in Brooklyn, New York," the Times added.
Lea Ypi, an Albanian academic, wrote in an op-ed for The Guardian on Monday that "Albanians know that real-estate speculation without state support means ordinary citizens will struggle to buy a flat or pay the rent."
"They know that luxury tourism means holidays in your own country become a privilege for the few," Ypi added. "With no unions to speak of and a labor movement that only appears in communist-era footage of May Day parades, work conditions are so exploitative that only those from countries even more desperate are willing to take the jobs that arise."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Gift to Corporate Polluters': Republicans Advance Massive Assault on Wildlife and EPA
“This morally bankrupt bill will only lead to dirtier air, more toxic water, and countless species shoved over the extinction cliff," said one wildlife defender.
Jun 04, 2026
Congressional Republicans on Wednesday approved an appropriations bill containing massive cuts to Environmental Protection Agency funding, more than 20 riders undermining the Endangered Species Act, and other provisions harmful to the environment and wildlife—while boosting mining on federal lands.
Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee advanced the fiscal year 2027 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies funding bill, which slashes total expenditures for the EPA by 20% and reduces its enforcement budget by $169 million—or nearly half, compared to last year’s levels. GOP lawmakers claim the dramatic reduction in EPA funding "safeguards American taxpayer dollars."
The bill also cuts the US Fish and Wildlife Service's listing budget nearly in half, "effectively dismantling the program in charge of determining which animals and plants deserve protection under the Endangered Species Act," according to a letter sent by a coalition of 80 conservation groups to House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) and Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.).
"The legislation also contains a total of at least 21 anti-wildlife poison pill riders—the largest number of policy riders that has ever been included in the base bill in the history of the Endangered Species Act," the groups' letter notes. "These riders would cause irreparable harm by undoing decades of progress to stabilize and recover some of our most iconic species."
The riders include measures blocking or weakening protections for imperiled species including the greater sage-grouse, lesser prairie chicken, northern long-eared bat, northern spotted owl, Canada lynx, and seven species of freshwater mussels.
Provisions in the bill also prohibit the federal government from banning or restricting lead in ammunition or fishing gear, block the reintroduction of grizzly bears in the North Cascades and Bitterroot ecosystems, and revive Florida’s illegal wetland destruction permitting program that harms species, including the Florida panther and frosted flatwoods salamander.
The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), one of the groups leading the letter to House Appropriations Committee leaders, noted Thursday that the legislation also codifies climate denialism into law "by exempting federal land management agencies from updating their plans when new information shows endangered species are being harmed or killed on public lands."
Meanwhile, the bill contains provisions intended to expand mining on federal lands, including reinstating certain mineral leases and limiting some land withdrawals.
"Instead of lowering the cost of living and confronting the climate crisis, House Republicans are raising utility bills and energy prices," the office of House Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Subcommittee Ranking Member Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) said in a statement Wednesday.
"The legislation takes an aggressive anti-environment, pro-corporate polluter stance with cuts to the EPA and policy provisions that endanger public health and fail to confront the climate crisis," Pingree's office added. "The bill also guts resources for the arts and museums while failing to prevent the administration from misusing funds to build President [Donald] Trump’s Garden of Heroes and Triumphal Arch."
The Republicans’ spending bill for Interior + Environment is a disaster:🚨 20% cut to EPA🚨 Free passes to polluters🚨 Rollbacks on PFAS regulations🚨 Millions for Trump’s vanity projectsThey care more about the president’s ego than the health of people and our planet.We're in for a FIGHT.
[image or embed]
— Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (@pingree.house.gov) June 3, 2026 at 9:32 AM
Pingree's office said the bill:
- Raises utility bills by shifting costs onto state and local governments and making electricity more expensive through funding cuts and policies that would cripple renewable energy development;
- Worsens the climate crisis by cutting critical EPA work;
- Slashes funding for national parks, cutting facility operations and maintenance by $163 million;
- Guts resources for museums, arts, and culture;
- Favors polluters over public health through harmful policies that undermine EPA’s ability to regulate pollution; and
- Exploits public lands and accelerates ecosystem decline by allowing harmful and dirty mining activities and by removing Endangered Species Act protections for numerous species.
Democrats offered amendments to the bill during full committee markup, including measures to remove all the poison pills from the legislation, promote renewable energy, ban coastal oil drilling in California and Florida, provide funding for environmental justice initiatives, and prevent the construction of Trump vanity projects including his White House ballroom and bunker. Republicans rejected all of the amendments.
"This bill is a gift to corporate polluters, who would poison our communities in pursuit of even greater profits," DeLauro said in a statement Wednesday. "It saddles cities, towns, and working families with higher utility bills. And it allows President Trump to continue raiding public funds to pay for his own vanity projects."
"At a time when the American people are struggling to make ends meet, this bill makes the problem worse," she added. "It does nothing to bring down costs, while allowing the billionaires and big corporations, who have profited by polluting our communities, to get even richer. Meanwhile, the air we breathe and the water we drink gets less and less safe.”
CBD director of government affairs Stephanie Kurose said Thursday that "it's a disgrace that House Republicans want to dismantle decades of environmental progress and hand polluters unprecedented power over the health of our communities, public lands, and wildlife."
“This morally bankrupt bill will only lead to dirtier air, more toxic water, and countless species shoved over the extinction cliff," Kurose added. "Future generations will pay the price for this staggering level of political irresponsibility.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular