by Louis Sahagun of the LA Times
As 101 Freeway traffic streaked past, a dozen conservationists and fundraisers gathered this week just west of Liberty Canyon Road in Agoura Hills, their eyes alternating between maps they carried and the contours of a canyon where mountain lions hunt and breed.
But it wasn’t the big cats they were looking for. Their target, instead, was a patch of land that could anchor a 200-foot-long, 165-foot-wide overpass spanning a stretch of freeway that carries 100,000 vehicles each day.The bridge they hope to build near Liberty Canyon Road, scientists say, would provide safe crossing for wildlife, helping diversify the gene pool among the small, isolated populations of mountain lions remaining in the Santa Monica Mountains south of the freeway as well as in the Simi Hills and Santa Susana Mountains to the north.