Starre Julia Vartan

I haven’t written about wildlife in awhile (since pre-book days!) and it was fun to jump back into it for this story, my first for Mongabay, and my first Australia-based story as well.

The story covers all the details about Cawley’s Wildlife Bridge south of Sydney, which was specially designed for arboreal animals (and land-traveling animals can use it too!). Click through the videos below to see the unique and creative construction to help a variety of animals cross a dangerous highway safely.

It was great to stretch my writing muscles, and also a wonderful follow-up to a piece I wrote about a new wildlife bridge in Washington State a few years back for National Geographic.

This was a wonderfully positive story to report, and I got a chance to make some great videos each time I visited the bridge, which involved a hike through national parks to get to. My first visit out there, I interviewed biologist on the project, Kylie Madden (see her in the video below).

That first visit, the bridge was still under construction as you see. When I returned a couple weeks later, it was all finished!