Last Friday night, March 15, adult male bobcat B-361 was hit and killed by a car on Las Virgenes Road in Calabasas (just north of Mulholland Highway), reported Ranger Ana Beatriz of the National Park Service in an online post. She said the incident occurred at almost exactly the same spot where another bobcat, B-356, was hit and killed by a car last July.
“Sadly, being struck by a vehicle is the second most common cause of death for bobcats in our study, second only to mange,” Beatriz wrote. “This male cat was collared by our biologists on Nov. 6, 2018—the day before the tragic Borderline Bar shooting and two days before the Woolsey Fire.”
“He roamed between the burned and unburned areas of Malibu Canyon,” Beatriz continued. “His carcass has been picked up and he will undergo a necropsy (although the cause of death is obvious). As with all the other animals in our bobcat study, collecting tissue samples and learning about the general health of the animal is a critical part of our research. We also keep tissue samples for future studies.”
Beatriz asked everyone to please be careful when driving. “We share the Santa Monica Mountains with large wild animals like deer, bobcats and mountain lions who sometimes make attempts to cross the road,” she wrote. “In this case, it was not a successful attempt.”