Dead mountain lion found on Highway 101 near wildlife crossing

Early Saturday morning, a dead mountain lion was found on the 101 Freeway near Agoura Hills, Calabasas, near where a wildlife crossing is currently being built.

The California Highway Patrol received a call at 4:48 a.m. about an animal found in one of the highway’s slow lanes near Liberty Canyon Road, CHP Officer Elizabeth Kravig said. When they arrived, they found the mountain lion lying in the road, she said.

Kravig said the CHP has no information on how the mountain lion was killed or how he or she got there.

The video shows that the animal is lying on the far right on the south side of the highway.

“It was heartbreaking,” said Beth Pratt, regional director of the California National Wildlife Federation. “I mean, any time we lose a cat … it’s heartbreaking.”

She says repeated incidents like this are precisely why wildlife crossings are necessary when highways cover so much of what was once open land.

“Unfortunately, this happens every day,” Pratt said. “I think we have not considered the moral consequences of driving for animals and people.”

It happened near the same freeway exit where a crossing is being built for mountain lions and other wildlife – an attempt to prevent these animals from being hit and killed while roaming in their natural habitat along LA’s freeways. The bridge, which is being used as Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossingwould connect mountain ranges on both sides of the 101 and is scheduled to be completed next year.

Construction is scheduled to begin in 2022. The interchange will be built where the freeway meets Liberty Canyon Road and is a joint project of the California Department of Transportation, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, the National Wildlife Federation and the National Park Service.

“Without a safe and sustainable wildlife crossing, movement between these remaining natural habitat areas is severely restricted and wildlife in the Santa Monica Mountains is essentially trapped,” says an online description of the crossing by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

The stretch of highway where the mountain lion was found is between the cities of Agoura Hills and Calabasas.