Santa Cruz’ famous downtown mountain lion was struck and killed while crossing Highway 17 early Thursday morning near Vine Hill Road.
The lion’s body was given to UC Santa Cruz researchers, who helped capture the wayward puma in June and fitted it with a tracking collar. The juvenile male crossed Highway 17 several times in the months since its downtown excursion.
“He may have just been exploring,” said Yiwei Wang, a UCSC doctoral candidate who works with the Santa Cruz Puma Project. “He was still pretty young.”
Read the full account here in the San Jose Mercury News