LOS ANGELES — Whoever drove the car or truck that last week killed the mountain lion P-89 on the 101 Freeway in Woodland Hills — about 60 years ago, that driver would have been in line for a reward, a government atta-boy bounty of as much as $75 (more than $730 today).
California was not fussy about how you killed a mountain lion, just so long as you did. Over nearly six decades, from 1907 until 1963, the state paid out more than half a million dollars for 12,461 mountain lion corpses.
Today, we mourn publicly when even one Felis concolor is killed by human hands or, as happens far more often, by tires.
