Mountain lions (pumas) increasingly navigate human-dominated landscapes as urban sprawl fragments their habitat, creating conflicts that result in welfare harm for individual animals and management challenges for wildlife agencies.
Urban mountain lions suffer welfare harms that are largely invisible: chronic sub-lethal rodenticide poisoning that impairs clotting and causes immune damage; road crossing injuries and death; and the chronic stress of navigating human-dominated landscapes with limited territory and food. Animals that enter suburban areas and are deemed a public safety threat face lethal removal — a welfare outcome that is often avoidable with appropriate non-lethal deterrents and public education. The case of P-22 illustrated both the resilience of individual mountain lions and the profound welfare costs of long-term isolation in a fragmented urban landscape, including his eventual euthanasia from accumulated health problems linked to his circumstances. Wildlife crossings that reconnect isolated populations reduce both the genetic and welfare costs of urban fragmentation.