A mountain lion found dead last month in the western Santa Monica Mountains was killed and mutilated by poachers, according to state fish and game wardens who are seeking tips in the case.
“We're going to have to get lucky on this. There's virtually no forensic evidence," said Andrew Hughan, a spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Game. Investigators, he added, are hoping a member of the public will hear “somebody bragging about how they killed a mountain lion and they'll call us” at (800) 334-2258, the agency's hot line.
The 7-year-old male, known as P-15, had been tracked for nearly two years by National Park Service biologists who trapped him in Point Mugu State Park. They outfitted him with a GPS collar as part of an ongoing study of mountain lion movement in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.
One of six or seven mountain lions believed to live in the Santa Monicas, he roamed the entire range.
In late August, P-15's collar stopped transmitting signals. Biologists searched the area of his last known location but did not find him. Then on Sept. 11, they received a call from a member of the public who had found a mountain lion carcass in a canyon between Cal State Channel Islands and Newbury Park in Ventura County.
The tracking collar had been removed and the animal had been mutilated. To determine its identity, researchers sent tissue samples to the UCLA Conservation Genetics Resource Center, which compared it to samples previously taken from mountain lions in the study. It was P-15.
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