A new mountain lion has been spotted in the Verdugos. It’s interesting that LA is so big and geographically diverse that it can have not just parks within it, but a wilderness. Unfortunately, urban encroachment is going to make it harder and harder for these animals to make it there. They’re building a tunnel under the 101 to allow them to move back and forth between the Santa Monicas and the mountains above Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks, but I’m not sure if it will be sufficient, and it looks like they need one under the 210 to allow safe passage between the San Gabriels and the Verdugos.
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Would a sidewalk for an animal work any better for a sidewalk for humans? Animals go where they want, just like humans.
Where I live we have wolves, mountain lions, bears, moose, and other critters that are not just on the periphery of towns and cities but also traverse heavily populated areas. Granted we don’t have as large or dense a population as LA.
Wolves were reintroduced and there has been a lot of controversy over it. They have spread much farther than was expected and have a lot of impact on people that death statistics don’t capture. When you talk to someone from Seattle about it, they blame the humans but no one in Seattle has to worry about a wolf when they take the dog for a walk or go camping.
Most people don’t have to “worry” but you do have to keep you wits about you because even an uncommon event is still a possibility. Same is true for encounters with mountain lions, bears, and moose. This is especially true when the activities you engage in make an uncommon event more likely to occur.