Mountain lions (pumas) are adapting to increasingly fragmented suburban habitats at the edges of western US cities. Coexistence requires landscape connectivity, conflict prevention, and a shift in human tolerance for large predators.
Mountain lion welfare at urban edges involves both direct and indirect threats. Direct threats include vehicle strikes on freeways fragmenting their habitat, illegal hunting, and lethal removal following livestock depredation. Indirect welfare effects include the chronic stress of living in small, fragmented habitat patches surrounded by human development. P-22's necropsy revealed severe mange and numerous health problems associated with his constricted territory. The wildlife crossing represents a welfare and conservation intervention that would have benefited P-22and similar lions by allowing movement to larger territories and genetic exchange. Coexistence programs that prevent conflicts through livestock protection remove the trigger for lethal management that is the most direct welfare threat.