Another mountain lion has been found dead in the local mountains … a victim of the fire.
P-64 had burned paws.
This was the clever male mountain lion .. the one who figured out how to ctoss the 101 Freeway many times.
P-64 was the the “Culvert Cat”.
The only mlountain lion cat ever tracked using a flood control culvert near Malibu Canyon … a curved pipe under 12 lanes of freeway.
Biologists were tracking P-64 as the fire approached him in the hills north of Oak Park … north of the 101 Freeway.
Rather than run towards civilization … people and fire trucks … P-64 ran into the fire.
He continued to travel throughout the Simi Hills for the next few days, covering several miles before then hunkering down in a remote area.
The amount of distance he traveled, combined with the fact that the biologist located P-64 on November 26 with a telemetry device in an unburned portion of the Simi Hills, boosted hopes that P-64 may have been on a kill and surviving.
P-64 was approximately four years old and was first captured in February 2018 in cooperation with The Boeing Company at the Santa Susana Field Lab in the Simi Hills. Also known as “the Culvert Cat,” he surprised researchers by using a long and narrow storm drain multiple times to cross under the 101 Freeway near Liberty Canyon in Agoura Hills