"In the last eight years there have been 535 mountain lions reported killed on California highways — a steady toll of one to two each week that scientists suggest may exceed the reproductive rate of increasingly isolated and inbred puma clans.

“We may have reached a critical threshold: mountain lions getting killed by cars faster than they can reproduce,” said Fraser Shilling, director of the road ecology center at UC Davis, who on Thursday released a statewide map of the lethal collisions between 2015 and 2022.

“Southern California is the undisputed capital of freeways and car culture,” he said. “But state highways have turned out to be a dead end for mountain lions.”"

Louis Sahagún reports for the Los Angeles Times February 2, 2023. [2]