The Best Locations for L.A.’s Mountain Lion Freeway Bridges

The plight of the Los Angeles mountain lion—living in a tangle of freeways—has, in recent years, been a topic of conversation often enough that a single crossing of the 101 makes the papers.

It’s also earned the attention of enough researchers that the National Park Service can now draw elaborate family trees—recently reproduced in the L.A. Times—that demonstrate how often they are hit by cars, and how the divided population has turned to inbreeding.

Fundraising was already underway, but a recent report from UC Davis, the National Park Service and the Nature Conservancy has identified two places for wildlife bridges that would accommodate the lions without drawing them too close to populated areas: one in Agoura Hills and another in Temecula. (It’s worth noting that mountain lions actively avoid humans whenever possible.)

The threat to biodiversity posed by urban sprawl has become a more frequent topic of conversation in the last decade, and there are now wildlife crossings around the world for everything from koalas to red crabs to salamanders.