- Think about how roads can really have these profound impacts on the landscape.

Just disrupting the interconnected web of life.

Whether it's an individual animal or the ecosystems they participate in.

- [Narrator] As the director of the California Wildlife Program, Neil Sharma leads the Wildlife Conservation Network's efforts to safeguard the state's diverse and fragile ecosystems.

By supporting conservation projects that maintain and restore connections between habitats, the California Wildlife Program and its partners protect wildlife populations while strengthening the environments they depend on.

- [Sharma] An issue that we see throughout California is what we call habitat fragmentation.

And so there are these features in the built environment, things we need to build our cities, our roads, that end up negatively impacting whether it's a puma, a mountain lion, deer, badger, bobcat, tiger salamander.

Any number of species.

And so we're really focused on this idea of connectivity, which would have us protect enough habitat that represents the diversity of conditions we have throughout the state.

And kind of supports what these different species need to be able to live their lives.

To address the challenges of habitat fragmentation, the California Wildlife Program emphasizes building connections between landscape for wildlife and between people working to protect them.

I love developing partnerships with different people with different expertise, seeing how we can come together around a problem, figure out who has what strengths, see what we can put together.

And that's where the WCN Wildlife Fund model works really well because it is geared towards partnerships.

We're able to bring people together, figure out what resources are in need and bring that to bear in a flexible, creative, nimble kind of way.

Learn more about the protection of California Wildlife at norcalpublicmedia.org/wildlife