Mountain Lion Killed By Car Was Pregnant With 4 Kittens

CALABASAS, CA — A mountain lion that was fatally struck by a car in June was pregnant with four kittens, authorities announced Wednesday.

P-54 was struck and killed by a vehicle on Las Virgenes Road between Piuma Road and Mulholland Highway in late June. P-54 was one of over 100 cougars tagged and studied by the National Park Service.

P-54 was pregnant with four kittens when she was killed, NPS said in a news release Wednesday. The incident offered biologists their first opportunity to test mountain lion fetuses for toxin exposure, and testing revealed that all five animals had rat poison in their blood, according to NPS.

The finding offers a disheartening window into cougars' exposure to certain toxins, said Jeff Sikich, a biologist on the mountain lion project at Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

"A primary goal of our work is to learn whatever we can about these animals and how their lives are affected by the urban landscape they inhabit. Unfortunately, we've learned that mountain lions are susceptible to rat poisons even before they are born," Sikich said. “In this case, it is also unfortunate because the death of P-54 from a vehicle resulted in the loss of four other young mountain lions, two males and two females, that were about to enter the population.”

The test results show that toxicant exposure is widespread and repeated, NPS said.

The incident also underscores the immense threat that vehicles pose to local wildlife, NPS said.

P-54 is one of five cougars to be killed in a roadway in 2022 alone. Just two months before P-54's death, the lion's offspring was killed on the San Diego (405) Freeway near the Getty Center.

In late August, 2-year-old mountain lion P-90 was fatally struck by a vehicle just south of Ojai, according to NPS. P-89 was fatally hit around 2 a.m. on July 18 on the shoulder of the freeway between DeSoto Avenue and Winnetka Avenue.

In March, a tagged male mountain lion was killed on State Route 1 (Pacific Coast Highway).

P-54 was born and tagged in 2017. Her mother was P-23, another tagged mountain lion who was fatally struck by a vehicle on Las Virgenes Road in 2018, according to NPS