Young mountain lion given ‘second chance at life’ is killed by car after release in CA
.png "A young mountain lion was enjoying its first taste of freedom after recovering from a car crash — but then its “second chance at life” was cut short when it was hit again.")
A young mountain lion was enjoying its first taste of freedom after recovering from being hit by a car — but then its “second chance at life” was cut short when it was hit again.
Wildlife officials confirmed it was the same cougar that was released into the California wilderness June 26 after spending seven months recovering from the first accident at the San Diego Humane Society’s Ramona Wildlife Center.
“Such a sad end to this mountain lion’s second chance,” a spokesperson for the humane society said.
By all accounts, it seemed the resilient cub had beaten the odds against him. He had made an incredible recovery and managed to stay wild enough to be released back into the wilderness “where he belongs,” McClatchy News reported.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife fitted the young mountain lion with a satellite GPS collar to keep tabs on his “future health and wellbeing” before releasing him near where he was first found in Ventura County, about a 75-mile drive northwest from Los Angeles, McClatchy News reported.
“His release location was within the Santa Susana Mountains, and he had most recently been traveling through the Santa Clarita Valley,” the department told McClatchy News via email. “Both CDFW and (National Park Service) biologists received a few reports of him being seen in residential areas there between (June 29 and July 4).”
Then a notification from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office came into the department around 6 a.m. on Aug. 1. It said a dead mountain lion with a collar had been found along Soledad Canyon Road in Santa Clarita.
A CDFW biologist found the cougar on the side of the roadway about 7:30 that morning, the department said. It’s unclear if someone had moved its body or if it had found its way out of traffic on its own before it died.
The biologist confirmed the mountain lion was P-121, the same cougar the department had released the month before. He appeared to have died from injuries from being hit by the car.
It’s a similar scene to how the cub was found after he was hit by a car only about eight months before, Autumn Nelson told McClatchy News over the phone.
Nelson is the wildlife operations manager at San Diego Humane Society’s Ramona Wildlife Center.
“We received him on Thanksgiving Day,” she said. “He was found in a ditch in front of a school and was brought here with a really bad broken leg, with a fractured tibia in his left rear leg.”
The humane society’s hospital director, Dr. Danielle Clem, had lots of experience repairing similar injuries on cats and dogs, but had never attempted such a complicated orthopedic surgery on a wild animal, Nelson said.
After the successful surgery, Nelson’s staff cared from him from afar and monitored him using trail cameras, hoping to limit human contact so the cub could remain wild enough to live on his own in the wild.
“Usually with mountain lions that young, under 6 months, they can get used to people too easily and habituate to humans,” she said.
But the cub was “the perfect patient,” she said.
“Throughout his rehab he really did remain wild, and he self-limited a lot of times with his leg” so he wouldn’t risk injuring it again while recovering, she said. “We were really pleased with his progress throughout his time here. He knew what to do to stay wild and knew to hide and stay away from us.”
He seemed to know what to do once he was released as well, and went on to become the first collared mountain lion to cross a freeway where other animals usually stop, the Ventura County Star reported.
But he didn’t learn to stay away from cars, Nelson said. And because mountain lion territories are so expansive, they have to cross dangerous roads regularly and it’s all too common for cougars to get hit.
Nelson said she will remember the cub for his survival instincts while in her team’s care — and for his voracious appetite.
As he got older, the team provided him with deer that had been hit by cars to see how he would take to his species’ most natural prey, she said.
He was a natural and seemed to know instinctively not only to eat it, but to cache it away to keep it safe from other predators — a skill that would have allowed him to thrive in the wild, Nelson said.
“He was the best patient,” she said. “He was so good at everything he should have been good at.”
This story was originally published September 12, 2024 at 8:13 AM with the headline "Young mountain lion given ‘second chance at life’ is killed by car after release in CA."
