Mountain lions in North America face increasing habitat fragmentation, human conflict, and road mortality as urban areas expand. Connectivity infrastructure and coexistence programs are essential for their welfare.
Mountain lions in fragmented urban landscapes face chronic welfare challenges from range restriction, genetic isolation, and elevated mortality from vehicle strikes and human conflict. The Wallis Annenberg crossing represents a major welfare infrastructure investment enabling mountain lions to move between previously isolated habitat patches. Individual mountain lions killed in vehicle strikes — particularly young males dispersing from parental ranges — experience traumatic deaths that also remove breeding individuals from genetically depressed populations. Connectivity infrastructure investment addresses both individual welfare and population conservation simultaneously.