The Yukon government has made an appearance in a recent Maclean's magazine article entitled "99 stupid things the government spent your money on”.

Two new wildlife culverts near the new Grizzly Valley subdivision slipped in at #44 on the list, published earlier this month.

The article explained that the government spent $1 million to build two culverts for an expensive new subdivision in Whitehorse so moose would stay off the newly constructed road.

"That's commendable, except the culverts helped push the price of lots in the government-owned development to as much as $218,000, and one-third of the 30 lots failed to sell,” the article reads.

The Dec. 7 land lottery saw lots ranging in size from three to eight hectares.

It cost the government $5 million to get the unserviced lots ready to sell. This includes building the roads, wildlife culverts and installing electrical lines.

Mac Hyslop, a spokesperson for the Department of Community Services, told the Star in an e-mail last month that the wildlife culverts were installed in the subdivision in response to the recommendations from the wildlife studies that were conducted prior to development.

Using of this kind of structure can be considered "best practice” for lot development in areas within wildlife corridors, he said.

Pat Molloy, the department's director of land development, noted later that week that similar types of culverts have been built on Hamilton Boulevard and Range Road.

Although animals might not travel down the culverts right away, Molloy said, he is confident they will eventually make use of the million-dollar structures.

As of early December, there were no animal tracks going in nor out of the culverts, Molloy said.

The City of Abbotsford, B.C. topped the Maclean's list.

Officials there gave the owners of a local hockey team $1.3 million, even though "nobody buys tickets” and the team is continually losing money.