A mountain lion captured in Malibu recently indicates that wildlife and humans are mixing more frequently due to urbanization.
By Cortney Litwin /Staff Writer
It isn’t every day that researchers capture a mountain lion in Malibu, but catch one they did near Mulholland Highway above Leo Carrillo Beach. The 156-pound male was fitted with a GPS (Global Positioning System) collar to track his movements and then released.
National Park Service employees were thrilled.
“The entire office emptied out-everyone was there,” said Charles Taylor, spokesperson for the NPS, which is conducting studies of wildlife in urban areas.
The fascination with coming face to face with wildlife was evident when 100 people were packed into the National Park Service Visitor Center in Thousand Oaks recently to hear about lions, coyotes and bobcats roaming in and around the areas where we live. And with visiting bears making the news lately, the topic was timely.
The topic is also an important one, said NPS wildlife ecologist Dr. Seth Riley, who was leading the lecture, “Carnivores in the City.”
“If we want to preserve the Santa Monica Mountains and the Simi Hills, we’re going to have to understand the impacts of urbanization and fragmentation,” he said earnestly.
One way to understand this issue is to capture an animal, fit it with a radio collar that can be tracked using GPS and/or VHS telemetry (another frequency tracking system) and release it back into the wild. Riley told the attentive audience the lion being tracked, which was captured about a month ago, ranged more than 200 square kilometers, including Trancas, Ramirez and Solstice canyons, and was located just last week in the Malibu Creek State Park area.
“This male is using half the mountain just by himself. We’re hoping there are some females around as well,” Riley said with a smile, “or we won’t have many more mountain lions.”
Researchers had been looking for mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains since last year and finally photographed one by remote camera.
Concerned that Malibu residents may be nervous having a lion in their vicinity, Taylor was quick to assure residents that lions usually stay clear of people, although he said there was one incident about three years ago.
“Some people on bicycles came upon a mountain lion on a trail,” Taylor said, “and were so startled they ran into a port-a-potty.” The lion ignored them.
Sometimes an animal will set up residence even closer to homes. Two female bobcats wearing radio collars were tracked to the same backyard at a home in Thousand Oaks recently, unbeknownst to the homeowner. The bobcats had hidden in the foliage and had both given birth to a litter of kittens. Riley said this was unusual because bobcats are territorial.
So how does spying on wildlife help the environment?
The movements of wild animals help us “identify linkages of major habitats throughout the state,” Riley explained, and “how the animals are using the land.” He stressed the importance of wildlife corridors that allow animals to travel without the interference of neighborhoods and roadways, and to have “undercrossings they can use, with natural habitat on both sides.”
An astonishing example of how an animal can adapt was a female coyote that was being tracked. She had traveled from the Sepulveda Basin to Pierce College in Woodland Hills. But it wasn’t the distance that was amazing to Riley, it was that the coyote was somehow “finding what was left of the natural areas” in the city, which probably included traveling along the Los Angeles River, Riley speculated. Although the animal had a collar, the signal was often lost so her exact routes couldn’t be determined.
The coyote thrived and raised young within this urban landscape until she died a year ago.
A little closer to home, one woman in the audience asked if a high fence would keep coyotes out of her yard. Unfortunately for her, Riley acknowledged that these resourceful animals have been known to scale even a 6-foot barrier.
“The best way to keep out coyotes is to not have anything they want” such as trash, pet food and fruit, he said.
Wild animals are often forced to search for food in residential areas during drought conditions and fires. In July, neighbors in Monrovia watched enthralled as a bear tried to escape up a tree in front of a home. It stayed put for most of the afternoon until officials could capture and return it to the forest. More recently, a bear and her baby perished in a fire they apparently started after wandering into a home near the San Bernardino National Forest in search of food.
To assist in wildlife research, Riley urges anyone who has seen a bobcat or a mountain lion in their vicinity to contact NPS by calling 805.370.2301.