Letters to the Editor: Yes to mountain lion crossings — and a suggestion in the meantime?

To the editor: The photograph of P-89, the dead cougar by the freeway that accompanied your editorial was heartbreaking. Your list of remedies was most encouraging. Here’s another possibility that may be added to them.

Since the Department of Fish and Wildlife, Malibu Creek State Park and other such agencies already can remotely read the tracking collars attached to many of the animals, could they not place receivers at those locations along the freeways that the animals most frequently cross? Then those receivers, tuned to the animals’ tracking collar signals, could activate suitable alarms to scare away the cougars. Professional game wardens may have better alternatives.

But, on an experimental basis, to see if it’s effective, it’s a heckuva lot better than doing nothing, and allowing those magnificent animals to be killed off by freeway traffic.

Christopher Purcell, La Quinta

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Many readers and citizens voice their thanks for your robust endorsement of Assembly Bill 2344, the Safe Roads and Wildlife Protection Act soon to be heard by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

We are all deeply dismayed by the news of continued deaths of these treasured creatures on our roads and freeways. In an effort to stem this tide of mounting deaths, many of us have donated to help build the Wallis Annenberg Liberty Canyon Wildlife Crossing and are pleased to learn that there is funding for these kinds of critically needed projects.

If we wish for cougars and other wild creatures still attempting to live in our surrounding mountains, hills and even Griffith Park, these new crossings must be built. The animals desperately need space to roam and find a healthy mate and are, as noted, already sorely stressed by the shrinking of their habitats, wildfires and lethal rat-poisons. The population has shown support for the passage of this measure — its time has definitely come.

Elaine Livesey-Fassel, Los Angeles