Big cat population faring well in Santa Monica Mountains, but urbanization poses ongoing threat.
By Patrick Timothy Mullikin / Special to The Malibu Times
It’s been an ongoing game of cat and mouse between the area’s mountain lion population and staffers at the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area for the past seven years.
For the SMMNRA staff, capturing, collaring and monitoring these solitary animals is no easy task.
The stealthy mountain lion (also known in different regions of the United States as a cougar, puma and catamount) rarely mingles with man, can roam up to 250 miles and blends in perfectly with its environment.
“There are obviously more mountain lions in the area than we’ve been able to collar or identify,” said Lauren Newman, SMMNRA policy and external affairs manager. To date, 13 mountain lions have been fitted with GPS collars, the most recent on July 31 when staff members captured and collared P-13 in the Hidden Valley region of the Santa Monica Mountains. Newman said this latest cat might be the kitten of P-6, adding that blood and tissue samples collected from P-13 will be used for DNA testing through UCLA to help determine the potential relationship between P-13 and P-6. Although 13 animals have been tagged, only three collars are still functioning, and those two cats are in the Topanga and Malibu Creek areas, she said.
Capturing and collaring P-13 is great news for both SMMNRA staffers and fans of the lions. “Some people actually keep little genealogy maps of the mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains,” Newman said. “They love to add new lions to their list. There is a lot of support and recognition that mountain lions are kind of rare and special here.”
While rare in Southern California, the elusive cats are not considered an endangered species (in fact, in many states it’s legal to hunt mountain lions; Proposition 117, the California Wildlife Protection Act of 1990, forbids it, however); their biggest threat is urbanization, which is chipping away at their natural habitat. By tracking the cats’ movements with GPS devices, staff members are able to study the animals’ health and help figure ways to ensure their long-term survival.
“This presents us with tremendous opportunity to study wildlife in this otherwise urban environment,” Newman said.
The area she refers to-the 150,000-acre Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area-is the largest urban park in the U.S. Within this vast acreage is a mixture of state park land, private land, National Park Service land and land overseen by the Mountain Recreation Conservation Authority.
“A lot of different entities working together pretty collaboratively to try to preserve this open space.”
This open space, and lots of it, is key to a healthy mountain lion population, said Seth Riley, wildlife ecologist for the National Park Service.
“What we’ve been seeing over the past seven years now of the study is that their habitat in the Santa Monica Mountains and other areas seems to be pretty good,” he said. “The problem is that none of the chunks of that habitat is really big enough. What we sort of assumed from the beginning was they have ways to get back and forth across freeways, and sort of around development to get back and forth between the remaining habitats.”
Earlier this year one of the collared lions crossed-and survived-Highway 101 at Liberty Canyon, an unprecedented event both Riley and Newman agreed.
Crossing busy roadways is not the best arrangement for the lions. “It’s a pretty dangerous effort for them to cross.” Newman said, and SMMNRA is working closely with the California Department of Transportation to establish a wildlife crossing at that site there. “There’s a road under the freeway, but that’s not ideal,” Riley said.
Interactions between mountain lions and humans are rare in Southern California, said Riley, who has never seen one in its natural environment (other than those trapped and fitted with a GPS collar). Newman said she’s never seen one either, or her supervisor, for that matter. And these are large animals: a male mountain lion weighs around 140 pounds, a female 80 pounds, Riley said.
“I think they are interested in staying away from people, which is a good thing-a good thing for everyone, for the lion and for the people. They are still hunters. They pretty much have to use the element of surprise so they tend to move around quietly,” he said.