{"id":1870,"date":"2018-11-18T12:09:19","date_gmt":"2018-11-18T20:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/?p=1870"},"modified":"2022-07-30T17:40:08","modified_gmt":"2022-07-31T00:40:08","slug":"la-area-mountain-lions-face-a-smaller-harsher-world-after-wildfires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/2018\/11\/18\/la-area-mountain-lions-face-a-smaller-harsher-world-after-wildfires\/","title":{"rendered":"LA-area mountain lions face a smaller, harsher world after wildfires"},"content":{"rendered":"

It will take ’10 to 20 years’ before Santa Monica Mountains look like they did before Woolsey fire<\/strong><\/p>\n

Source of this article: The Los Angeles Times, November 18, 2018<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Two dozen biologists with binoculars and telemetry equipment fanned out across the smoldering gulches and slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area on Friday to take a preliminary accounting of the damage caused by wildfire to prime mountain lion country.<\/p>\n

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A deer lies where it fell, trying to outrun flames from the Woolsey fire, in the Solstice Creek bed below Corral Canyon Park in Malibu.<\/p><\/div>\n

It was arduous, dusty work, traipsing through shrub lands reduced to piles of white ash and denuded canyons. But the data they gathered were cause for cautious optimism.<\/p>\n

Of 13 mountain lions with radio collars they had been tracking before the Woolsey fire broke out, scientists confirmed that 12 were alive and moving outside of the burned areas in the vicinity of Point Mugu to the west, and from Malibu east to the 405 Freeway, scientists said.<\/p>\n

One lion, a sub-adult known as P-74, remained unaccounted for.<\/p>\n

Though Southern California\u2019s urban mountain lions have become a fixture in popular imagination, they are an imperiled breed living at the very limit of what is ecologically possible. Now biologists are watching, unsure of what\u2019s next in the area where many of the creature comforts that the large predators need to breed, hide and hunt deer were lost after the Woolsey fire roared through.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe national recreation area has become an immense natural experiment,\u201d Seth Riley, a National Park Service ecologist, said. \u201cThe big question now is this: What happens when a huge wildlife refuge hemmed by freeways and development abruptly loses more than half of its habitat to wildfire?\u201d<\/p>\n

For miles and miles in the Santa Monica Mountains, from ridgeline to ridgeline in all directions, the Woolsey fire exacted a heavy toll, burning 100,000 acres \u2014 88% of the area\u2019s federal parkland.<\/p>\n

It is a huge loss for an unlikely wilderness that has persisted for decades through dogged conservation despite surrounding urban sprawl.<\/p>\n

Public access to the range was hard fought by a bipartisan coalition of conservation and civic groups starting in the 1960s. Their goal: a unique combination of city, county, state and federal land, together with beaches, trails and scenic corridors that would run from Griffith Park to Point Mugu in Ventura County.<\/p>\n

In 1978, Congress awarded their efforts by authorizing the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area to provide open space in one of the nation\u2019s most congested, polluted and park-poor regions.<\/p>\n

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Walking a scorched trail in Liberty Canyon to see the damage caused by the Woolsey fire.<\/p><\/div>\n

Over the past 40 years, its trails have become a destination for hikers, mountain bikers, bird-watchers and equestrians, its roads a fixture for car commercials and motorcycle clubs and its creeks a draw for busloads of schoolchildren from throughout the region.<\/p>\n

Today, the chaparral highlands and sandstone peaks offer panoramic views of stubble and ash. Entry is restricted to people credentialed to work in fire zones.<\/p>\n

The fire burned the life out of hiking trails some say rank with such iconic paths as the John Muir Trail in the Sierra Nevada range and the Appalachian Trail in the East. Completed in 2016 after a half-century of hard work and altruism, the Backbone stretches through 67 miles of sycamores, chaparral and sandstone peaks between Point Mugu State Park and Will Rogers State Historic Park. Officials said segments of the Backbone trail within the Woolsey fire\u2019s footprint remain closed.<\/p>\n

Emily Pruitt, a spokeswoman for the National Park Service, said it is too early to know when burned sections of the recreation area will reopen.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fire destroyed at least 616 structures within the park,\u201d she said, \u201cand there are still a lot of potential hazards to be assessed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Properties with links to show business were destroyed. Among them were Paramount Ranch and sets used for HBO\u2019s hit series \u201cWestworld\u201d \u2014 both popular destination points for day trippers who used the background for family photos and Instagram posts.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost ecologists say it will take 10 to 20 years for the Santa Monica Mountains to look the way they did before the Woolsey fire came through,\u201d said Mark Mendelsohn, a National Park Service biologist. \u201cOf course, that depends on rainfall and drought.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it comes to native species, he said, \u201cthis fire means they are going to struggle, some more than others.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the largest mountain lion populations in Southern California is confined within 275 square miles in an around the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, which is bordered by the Pacific Ocean, major freeways, housing and commercial developments and agricultural fields.<\/p>\n

Studies begun in 2002 suggest the pre-fire landscape may have reached capacity with about 15 to 20 mountain lions. Inbreeding is a serious problem among these big cats, which have extremely low genetic diversity. The males will fight and kill others for territory, which is vastly more limited after the Woolsey fire.<\/p>\n

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A sign near the entrance to the Corral Canyon Park recreation area stands amid a landscape charred by the Woolsey fire in Malibu.<\/p><\/div>\n

A charred sign just west of Liberty Canyon Road and a stone\u2019s throw from the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills still stands in a critical wildlife corridor where conservationists hope to build a wildlife bridge. It would allow safe passage and help diversify the gene pool among the groups of mountain lions remaining in the Santa Monicas south of the freeway as well as in the Simi Hills and Santa Susana mountains to the north.<\/p>\n

Now, the site of what aims to be one of the most ambitious predator restoration projects in the United States is surrounded by miles of charred hills and mountains.<\/p>\n

Whenever conditions change, there will be winners and losers. Mendelsohn has witnessed plenty of heartbreaking evidence of both during recent surveys of the still-smoldering landscape.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome animals didn\u2019t make it,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it was encouraging to see a deer in a completely charred forest, a tiny wren tit hunkering down in one of the few shrubs left standing, and a woodrat leap out from under a rock near where its nest had burned.\u201d<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take long for Mendelsohn to find the natural sounds he was searching for as he strode along a creek edged with singed reeds and brush in the Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve area of Agoura Hills.<\/p>\n

It was home to an isolated population of federally threatened red-legged frogs discovered in 1998, and a place where biologists gather eggs used in reintroduction programs elsewhere in the recreation area.<\/p>\n

\u201cFive plopping sounds in the water gave me a sense of cautious relief,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Federal biologists are discussing proposals to capture the frog population, if necessary, in the event a large storm threatens to bury one of the species\u2019 last outposts in Los Angeles and Ventura counties in mud and debris.<\/p>\n

There was good news in Topanga Canyon, where firefighters avoided dropping retardant that would have decimated a Malibu Creek habitat that\u2019s home to frogs, newts and protected fish such as Arroyo chubs and federally endangered southern steelhead trout.<\/p>\n

\u201cTopanga Canyon was spared,\u201d biologist Rosi Dagit said. \u201cI recently stood on a roadside pullout overlooking the stream and shouted, \u2018Thank god, you didn\u2019t burn!\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

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The GPS collar of P-74, a young male mountain lion who lives in the area burned by the Woolsey fire, has not transmitted data in days.<\/p><\/div>\n

For now, and in the years ahead, biologists will focus attention on how the mobile, efficient predators at the top of the area\u2019s food chain are faring, and their impacts on recovering plant and animal populations.<\/p>\n

The surprise is that nearly all of the mountain lions with radio collars turned up outside of the fire\u2019s burn area.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not clear whether one or more of those mountain lions outran the fire to safer conditions, or just happened to be there by some amazing coincidence when the fire broke out,\u201d said Riley, the National Park Service ecologist.<\/p>\n

Questions remain about how these big cats \u2014 already living closer to their peers than they are predisposed to \u2014 will endure in even tighter confines.<\/p>\n

There may be repercussions, and not just for the mountain lion population. \u201cPeople really need to protect their animals,\u201d Riley said, \u201cnow that there are fewer deer on the landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It will take ’10 to 20 years’ before Santa Monica Mountains look like they did before Woolsey fire Source of this article: The Los Angeles Times, November 18, 2018 Two dozen biologists with binoculars and telemetry equipment fanned out across the smoldering gulches and slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,48,7,32,40,67,27,19,57,26,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-california-state-parks","category-endangered-species","category-environment","category-nps","category-history","category-invasive-species","category-mountain-lions","category-santa-monica-mountains","category-wildfire","category-wildlife","category-wildlife-bridge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1870","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=1870"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3477,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1870\/revisions\/3477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}