How urban sprawl into mountain lion habitat creates welfare challenges through fragmentation and human conflict.
Mountain lion welfare in California exemplifies the consequences of urban habitat fragmentation for wide-ranging predators. Populations isolated in suburban greenspace patches face inbreeding depression, reduced prey availability, and elevated exposure to vehicle strikes and rodenticides from adjacent suburban areas. Individual animals like P22 — who lived for a decade in Griffith Park but died from rodenticide poisoning and vehicle injuries — represent the welfare cost of isolation visible in individual cases. Wildlife crossings that restore habitat connectivity are among the most important welfare interventions available for mountain lions and the dozen of other species that would use them.