Excerpt from the linked content:^1,2

>Mountain lions are protected from hunting in California by a law passed by popular vote in 1990.

>However, a team of researchers working across the state found that human-caused mortality — primarily involving conflict with humans over livestock and collisions with vehicles — was more common than natural death for this protected large carnivore.

>[Lead author] Benson and his colleagues found that mountain lions were at greater risk of mortality from humans when they were closer to rural development.

>They also found that mountain lions were less likely to die in areas where there were higher proportions of voters in favor of pro-environmental initiatives.

>[The] new study showed that populations of mountain lions in California experiencing greater human-caused mortality also had lower population-level survival rates, suggesting that humans do indeed increase overall mortality.

>Most research on mountain lions is conducted at relatively small scales, which limits understanding of mortality caused by humans across the large areas they roam.

>To address this, scientists from multiple universities, government agencies and private organizations teamed up to better understand human-caused mortality for mountain lions across the entire state of California.

>The team tracked almost 600 mountain lions in 23 different study areas, including the Sierra Nevada, the northern redwoods, wine country north of San Francisco, the city of Los Angeles and many other areas of the state.

^1 University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 20 Mar. 2023, https://www.ucdavis.edu/climate/news/humans-are-leading-source-death-california-mountain-lions-despite-hunting-protections

^2 John Benson et al. (2023) The ecology of human-caused mortality for a protected large carnivore. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120 (13) e2220030120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2220030120