News Release

Mountain lion P-54 killed by vehicle strike

Mountain lion P-54 during a recapture in 2020.

NPS / Jeff Sikich

News Release Date: June 17, 2022

Contact: Ana Beatriz Cholo

Not too far from where her mother was hit and killed by a vehicle back in January 2018, P-54 became the latest grim statistic for regional mountain lions when she was also struck and killed by a vehicle this morning. 

Biologists from Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area were alerted by the Agoura Animal Shelter that a radio-collared mountain lion had been killed on Las Virgenes Road between Piuma Road and Mulholland Highway at around 9:30 a.m. today.

P-54 will be taken to the California Animal Health and Food Safety Lab in San Bernardino for a full necropsy.

The female adult mountain lion is the 29th mountain lion (and 10th radio collared one) to be killed by a vehicle in our study area since 2002 that includes the Santa Monica Mountains, Simi Hills, Santa Susana Mountains, Verdugo Mountains, and Griffith Park.

P-54 has been tracked by biologists in the Santa Monica Mountains practically her entire life. She was born in January 2017 and the following month, NPS researchers marked her with a tracking device as a kitten while her mother, P-23, was away from the den.

In January 2018, P-54's mother, P-23, was found dead after being struck by a vehicle along the same road but further south from where P-54 was discovered today. P-54 was 1 year old at the time of her mother's death, which is during the early end of when kittens typically leave their mother.

In 2020, she gave birth to two litters. The first one in May 2020 kicked off the “summer of kittens,” which included five mountain lion mothers giving birth in our study area between May and September of 2020. She gave birth to three kittens (P-82, P-83, & P-84). Researchers believe that this litter from May did not survive. In late October 2020, she gave birth to P-97 and P-98, both males.

NPS has been studying mountain lions in and around the Santa Monica Mountains for the last two decades to determine how they survive in a fragmented and urbanized environment. CDFW is responsible for overseeing the management and conservation of mountain lions in the state.
 

Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area (SMMNRA) is the largest urban national park in the country, encompassing more than 150,000 acres of mountains and coastline in Ventura and Los Angeles counties. A unit of the National Park Service, it comprises a seamless network of local, state and federal parks interwoven with private lands and communities. As one of only five Mediterranean ecosystems in the world, SMMNRA preserves the rich biological diversity of more than 450 animal species and 26 distinct plant communities. For more information, visit www.nps.gov/samo.