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Mountain Lions: A Bridge Out of Extinction
Why the urgent need wildlife crossings across Los Angeles and Southern California, affects us as much as mountain lions.
The Cat That’s Lost The Cream
Stuck in a habitat ghetto fenced in by freeways on which hundreds of thousands of cars roar past every day, Santa Monica mountain lions find themselves on the brink of extinction.
Fewer than 15 mountain lions currently pace around just 275 square miles in and around the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, an area which is bordered by the Pacific Ocean, the 405 and 101 freeways, farms, and Los Angeles’s massive urban sprawl.
Conducted by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles and University of California, Davis in conjunction with the National Park Service, a 2019 study paints a bleak picture. Habitat loss and fragmentation have driven mountain lion populations to dangerously low levels of genetic diversity, without urgent action, one of southern California’s last big cats will become extinct in as little as 15 years.
Lead by Dr. John Benson, a wildlife ecologist with the La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science at UCLA; the study specifically looked at the mountain lion populations in the Santa Monica and Santa Ana mountains. They documented the lowest genetic diversity for…
