Research overview: roads, connectivity, and puma persistence near cities

This overview reviews research on how roads and urbanisation fragment puma populations and elevate human-puma conflict through roadkill, genetic isolation, and forced movement near people. It synthesises telemetry and genetic studies from southern California, Colorado's Front Range, and elsewhere documenting barrier effects of highways, inbreeding in cut-off populations, and the conservation value of wildlife crossings and protected corridors. The literature connects connectivity loss to conflict by concentrating pumas in shrinking habitat patches abutting development. The survey frames infrastructure solutions, crossings, fencing, corridor protection, as essential not only for puma survival but for reducing the dangerous proximity that breeds conflict at the urban-wildland interface.