AFTER a 2018 wildfire, mountain lions near Los Angeles were more likely to cross roads, travel further and be active during the daytime - when encounters with people are most likely. The shift to bolder behaviour concerns researchers, who note that increasing wildfires may jeopardise the urban cats' future. The wooded Santa Monica mountains north of Los Angeles are home to around 100 mountain lions, which, despite being bordered by large highways and human development, have managed to survive by hunting mule deer. After the 2018 Woolsey fire scorched more than 400 square kilometres of land - roughly half of the cats' habitat - Rachel Blakey, now at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and her colleagues compared data from GPS tracking collars on 17 mountain lions before and after the blaze.
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