Could be. More likely: most of the deaths are just north of their population center in Everglades-Corkscrew-Fakahatchee. They need a lot of space (even females), and they're trying to expand. Corridors!

That experiment was a macrodose of a natural process between the many North American cougar subspecies where their ranges abutted--they would interbreed, which was a regular source of genetic diversity. Or so Darrell Land (FWC) told me many years ago when we talked about FP 130.

@craigtimes.bsky.social More road deaths usually means their numbers are also rising... have the northward corridors been a success, or are FPs still bottlenecked by I-75?