{"id":1719,"date":"2016-07-17T18:07:24","date_gmt":"2016-07-18T01:07:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/?p=1719"},"modified":"2022-07-31T18:18:46","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T01:18:46","slug":"mountain-linos-face-two-evils-in-food-hunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/2016\/07\/17\/mountain-linos-face-two-evils-in-food-hunt\/","title":{"rendered":"Mountain lions face ‘two evils’ in food hunt"},"content":{"rendered":"

L.A. pumas tend to get closer to urban areas – to avoid other cats.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Source of this article, The Los Angeles Times, July 17, 2016<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>

Puma-22, a.k.a. P-22, feeds on a mule deer in Griffith Park. A new study finds that male and female mountain lions select different hunting grounds. (National Park Service)<\/p><\/div>\n

In the hills and wooded areas of the Los Angeles area, mountain lions remain a constant, yet mostly unseen, presence.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0the\u00a0predators may come\u00a0closer to human areas to hunt than we previously realized, according to a\u00a0recent study by UCLA and the National Park Service.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0study, published in PLOS One,\u00a0tracked mountain lions in and around the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area<\/a> to see where the predators like to hunt and kill their favorite food: mule deer.<\/p>\n

Since 2002,\u00a0the park service has\u00a0monitored pings from GPS collars attached to 26 of the cats. Whenever the data revealed a puma\u00a0lingering at the same location for much of the day, the researchers knew it had probably made a kill.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when a researcher would head out, slog\u00a0through the thick chaparral and to try to find the carcass. In the end, the researchers logged 420 mule deer kills.<\/p>\n

\"P2\"<\/a>The results offer new insights into how individual mountain lions respond to disruption from urban development\u00a0and threats from within their own species.<\/p>\n

Mountain lions<\/a>, which can occupy ranges of up to 200 square miles for males and 75 square miles for females, prefer to hunt on\u00a0steep slopes and in thick vegetation,\u00a0which give them an advantage when sneaking up on prey.<\/p>\n

Males tended\u00a0to hunt and kill deer\u00a0in wooded areas near creeks and rivers \u2014\u00a0habitats that attract plenty of deer.<\/p>\n

But to avoid crossing paths with aggressive males, female pumas killed deer closer to developed areas \u2014\u00a0less than a mile or so away on average.<\/p>\n

Urbanized landscapes may be the next best place to find deer outside the riparian woodland preferred by males. Artificial water sources like sprinklers and swimming pools\u00a0help maintain lush vegetation for deer to munch on, even in drought conditions.<\/p>\n

\"Mule<\/a>

Mule deer are seen in Black Star Canyon in Orange County. (Allen J. Schaben \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p><\/div>\n

Approaching human-occupied areas isn\u2019t without risks.<\/p>\n

The plights of the Los Angeles area\u2019s mountain lions are well-known. Many cats have been struck and killed<\/a> by cars while attempting to cross freeways<\/a>, or have been sickened or killed by rodent poison<\/a>. Due to their isolation from other puma populations, they also face problems from inbreeding<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Within the study area, however, the leading cause of death for mountain lions was other mountain lions, said Seth Riley, a National Park Service wildlife ecologist and a co-author of the study.<\/p>\n

Male mountain lions are known to kill fellow pumas\u00a0in confrontations over prey carcasses, and the problem may be exacerbated in the Santa Monica Mountains.<\/p>\n

Typically, males disperse and adopt their own home ranges. But in these mountains, the predators are held in close quarters by freeways and development, Riley said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had virtually no evidence of young males being able to disperse, so many of [them] end up getting killed by close relatives, like their father or brother,\u201d Riley said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible the risk to a female or her young of\u00a0being attacked by a male\u00a0is greater than the risks posed by venturing near humans, said wildlife ecologist\u00a0John Benson.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt could be sort of the lesser of two evils,\u201d said Benson,\u00a0who led the study as a postdoctoral researcher at UCLA\u2019s La Kretz Center of California Conservation.<\/p>\n

\"P-34<\/a>

P-34 is photographed in a backyard in Newbury Park, Calif., in December 2014. The mountain lion was found dead of rodenticide poisoning less than a year later. (Sherry Kempster via Acorn Newspapers)<\/p><\/div>\n

While some mountain lions came closer to urban environments than the researchers\u00a0expected, only two actually made kills within\u00a0developed areas, the study authors noted.<\/p>\n

In general, Benson said, mountain lions seem to avoid contact with humans.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t seem like they\u2019re needing to go into backyards or anything like that,\u201d Benson said.<\/p>\n

Mountain lions that live near dense\u00a0urban landscapes, such as Griffith Park or Verdugo Hills,\u00a0avoided the area by hunting farther away from people.\u00a0The cats that lived in more remote areas were more willing to approach human settlements to hunt.<\/p>\n

\u201cContinued development in areas used by mountain lions adjacent to Los Angeles and other metropolitan areas could reduce the quality of foraging habitat for mountain lions,\u201d the study\u2019s authors suggest.<\/p>\n

Benson said focusing on individual-level differences in mountain lions will go a long way toward understanding the animals and ultimately conserving the species.<\/p>\n

\u201cA mountain lion isn\u2019t just a mountain lion in the L.A. area, he said. \u201cIts\u00a0behavior will be a function both of who it is \u2026 and also the environment it interacts with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given the challenges they face, Riley said, it\u2019s amazing that mountain lions still live around Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really is a testament to the amount of open space people have been able to conserve in Southern California,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

L.A. pumas tend to get closer to urban areas – to avoid other cats. Source of this article, The Los Angeles Times, July 17, 2016 In the hills and wooded areas of the Los Angeles area, mountain lions remain a constant, yet mostly unseen, presence. But\u00a0the\u00a0predators may come\u00a0closer to human […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,12,27,19,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conejo-valley","category-los-angeles","category-mountain-lions","category-santa-monica-mountains","category-ventura-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1719"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3513,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719\/revisions\/3513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}