Puma Profiles: P-54, Killed on the Road Not Far From Where Her Mother Died

P-54, a female born in January 2017, was one of the mountain lions tracked by the National Park Service in the Santa Monica Mountains.

P-54. NPS.

Family

Her mother was P-23. Park researchers marked P-54 at the den in late February 2017, while P-23 was away. She was thought to be the only kitten of P-23's third litter, but remote camera photos and videos later showed another kitten, which was never identified.

Genetic tests showed that P-12 was both her father and her grandfather. GPS data had placed P-23 with her half-sibling P-30 for three days, a possible sign of mating but no proof of it, and about 90 days later a cluster of GPS points showed that P-23 had given birth. A female can mate with more than one male during a single estrus cycle.

P-54 had a known half-sibling, P-53, from a litter born in June 2015. Kittens from that litter, including P-43, and from an earlier one, P-36 and P-37, were all killed by other wild animals.

On her own

In January 2018 P-23 was found dead beside Malibu Canyon Road, probably hit by a vehicle. P-54 was a year old, about the age at which kittens usually leave their mother, and she survived. DNA confirmed that the young female a park biologist captured on the Pepperdine University campus on February 27, 2018, was P-54.

Her litters

On May 14, 2020, biologists found that P-54 had given birth to two males, P-82 and P-83, and a female, P-84. The father was thought to be P-63, then one of only two radio-collared males living in the Santa Monica Mountains south of the 101 Freeway. Born in the Simi Hills, he may have brought new and much-needed genes into the region, but his paternity of this litter was never confirmed.

In October 2020 she gave birth to at least two more kittens, unknown to biologists until remote cameras picked them up in the winter of 2021. Their existence suggests that the May litter did not survive.

Death

In June 2022 P-54 was killed by a vehicle, not far from where her mother had been killed.

Sources

• National Park Service, Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, "Puma Profiles: P-54." https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/puma-profiles-p-54.htm
• NPS news releases: P-23 killed on Malibu Canyon Road; P-54 killed by a vehicle
• Corrected: "male mountain radio-collared mountain lions" to "radio-collared male mountain lions".