The ecology of human-caused mortality for a protected large carnivore

Mitigating human-caused mortality for large carnivores is a pressing global challenge for wildlife conservation. However, mortality is almost exclusively studied at local (within-population) scales creating a mismatch between our understanding of risk and the spatial extent most relevant to conservation and management of wide-rang-ing species. Here, we quantified mortality for 590 radio-collared mountain lions statewide across their distribution in California to identify drivers of human-caused mortality and investigate whether human-caused mortality is additive or compen-satory. Human-caused mortality, primarily from conflict management and vehicles, exceeded natural mortality despite mountain lions being protected from hunting. Our data indicate that human-caused mortality is additive to natural mortality as population-level survival decreased as a function of increasing human-caused mor-tality and natural mortality did not decrease with increased human-caused mortality. Mortality risk increased for mountain lions closer to rural development and decreased in areas with higher proportions of citizens voting to support environmental initi-atives. Thus, the presence of human infrastructure and variation in the mindset of humans sharing landscapes with mountain lions appear to be primary drivers of risk. We show that human-caused mortality can reduce population-level survival of large carnivores across large spatial scales, even when they are protected from hunting.