One other Santa Monica Mountains Mountain Lion Killed By Car

One other mountain lion has died from an obvious automobile collision at Santa Monica Mountains in California/NPS file

One other mountain lion that roamed the Santa Monica Mountains in California seems to have been killed by a automobile, in line with Nationwide Park Service employees. A launch from Santa Monica Mountains Nationwide Recreation Space mentioned P-81 was doubtless killed by a automobile strike Sunday, January 22.

California Division of Fish and Wildlife officers collected P-81’s physique on the Pacific Coast Freeway close to Las Posas Highway within the western Santa Monica Mountains. A necropsy shall be carried out to verify explanation for demise.

P-81 was round 4 years previous on the time of his demise. Nationwide Park Service biologists initially captured him within the western Santa Monica Mountains again in March 2020. He was important within the park’s mountain lion examine because of his bodily abnormalities – a kinked tail by which the tip was formed just like the letter “L” and just one descended testicle. These abnormalities marked the primary bodily proof of potential inbreeding despair because of a scarcity of genetic variety because the Park Service started finding out mountain lions within the park in 2002, rising the urgency of understanding, sustaining, and ideally rising connectivity for wildlife within the area.

The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing over the 101 Freeway, presently underneath development in Agoura Hills, is a significant and demanding step in connecting wildlife populations within the Santa Monica Mountains, together with mountain lions, with different populations to the north.

Car strikes are the main explanation for demise for the mountain lions within the examine space, in line with the park. Since March 2022, 9 mountain lions have died because of being hit by automobiles — six of these had been radio-collared. P-81 was the thirty fourth mountain lion, and the thirteenth radio-collared animal, to die from highway mortality within the examine space since 2002.

The Nationwide Park Service has been finding out mountain lions in and across the Santa Monica Mountains for the final twenty years to find out how they survive in a fragmented and urbanized atmosphere.