A mountain lion relaxing in the backyard of a home in the 700 block of 14th Street has put the neighborhood on high alert Friday, prompting Santa Monica police to deploy officers to the residential neighborhood just north of Montana Avenue and spurring a response from state wildlife officials.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife arrived just before noon and was working with local officers to safely remove it. Officers from the Santa Monica Police Department were already in the area assessing the situation and coordinating with wildlife resources.
Photographs of the animal showed it appeared to be in good health. Police urged residents in the area to remain indoors, keep pets inside, and avoid approaching or attempting to photograph the lion. Anyone who spots the animal was asked to call 911 immediately from a safe location.
The last time a mountain lion was seen in the city was in 2012 when one was discovered on the Promenade. In that case, the animal tried to escape before it could be tranquilized and was killed.
A narrow corridor, a rare encounter
The presence of a mountain lion in a Santa Monica residential neighborhood is unusual even by the standards of a region where the animals occupy a range stretching roughly 40 miles from the Hollywood Hills to Point Mugu.
National Park Service researchers tracking the local population have recorded more than 250,000 GPS points showing that lions strongly avoid humans and rarely enter developed areas, favoring chaparral and coastal sage scrub habitat instead.
Adult males in the region average a territory of roughly 144 square miles, while females average about 52 square miles, according to a 15-year NPS study. The 101 Freeway serves as a near-impenetrable barrier to movement — since 2002, only a handful of lions have documented crossings. One of them, P-22, famously crossed both the 101 and the 405 to reach Griffith Park, where he occupied a roughly 9-square-mile range — the smallest ever recorded for an adult male. He was euthanized in December 2022 following injuries sustained in a vehicle strike and attacks on small dogs.
A small population under pressure
NPS researchers estimate 10 to 15 adult and subadult mountain lions inhabit the Santa Monica Mountains and surrounding areas. Statewide, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife's December 2025 status review estimated the total population at between 3,645 and 4,750 animals.
The local population faces severe inbreeding pressure. The leading causes of death are vehicle strikes — more than 32 documented since 2002 — rodenticide poisoning, with 28 of 29 tested lions returning positive results, and intraspecific conflict.
On Feb. 12, 2026, the California Fish and Game Commission voted 3-0 to list Southern and Central Coast mountain lions as threatened under the California Endangered Species Act. Researchers have modeled that even one immigrant lion crossing into the population every two years could cut local extinction risk to about 2.4% — the primary conservation rationale behind the ongoing effort to construct a wildlife crossing over the 101 Freeway at Liberty Canyon.
Wildfires have pushed lions toward greater risk
Regional wildfires have compounded pressure on the local population, forcing lions into more dangerous movement patterns.
The 2018 Woolsey Fire burned nearly 100,000 acres, destroying roughly half of available lion habitat and approximately 88% of NPS parkland in the area. Two collared lions died in the fire, including P-64. A 2022 study published in Current Biology found that in the aftermath, lions avoided burned areas and took on significantly elevated risk: road crossings increased from roughly three to five per month, crossings of the 101 Freeway jumped from approximately once every two years to once every four months, and monthly travel distances rose from about 250 to nearly 400 kilometers.
The January 2025 Palisades Fire burned approximately 23,700 acres, with nearly 20,000 acres falling within the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. Tracked lion P-63 survived the fire, and footage captured a mother lion and two cubs fleeing down Topanga Canyon Boulevard as the blaze spread.
Attacks remain rare but have occurred nearby
Despite the low frequency of human-lion encounters overall, several attacks have occurred in communities adjacent to the Santa Monica Mountains in recent years. In August 2021, lion P-98 attacked a 5-year-old boy in Calabasas. A 5-year-old boy was attacked at Malibu Creek State Park on Sept. 1, 2024, and an 11-year-old girl was attacked in Malibu on Aug. 10, 2025, while feeding chickens. The lion responsible for each attack was subsequently euthanized.
California has recorded roughly two dozen verified mountain lion attacks on humans since 1986, a small number of them fatal.
