Tracks of the big cats

Humans and mountain lions are meeting more often, sometimes with deadly results. Radio-collars reveal the cougars’ paths

By Dave Brown

	Dwindling habitat has made sighting of mountain lions more common. A San Fernando Valley homeowner took these shots as a male cougar ran past. The park service captured him and relocated him to his home territory.
Photo: LILIAN DARLING HOLT

Wilderness is not just flowers and trees and chirping birds; it is a place where natural forces have free play, a relic of the environment in which humans evolved, where we were both predator and prey.
All this was tragically brought home to Southern Californians on Jan. 8, when mountain biker Mark Reynolds was killed by a 110-pound mountain lion in Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park in Orange County.
Though the public reaction was surprisingly restrained, several newspaper articles suggested that increased public use of wilderness was causing cougars to become habituated to people and to begin to look on them as prey.
Statistics do not bear this out. Only six Californians have been killed by cougars (four by mauling and two by rabies) since 1890—an average of one every 19 years. You are still a lot safer in the hills with the cougars than you are driving an automobile, riding a mountain bike, or petting a dog. Yet the speed and power of the world’s fourth largest cat commands our respect, and we would do well to use our natural intelligence to learn as much as possible about it if we are going to continue to recreate in its wilderness home.
Concerned about the increasing fragmentation and loss of the cougar’s wildland habitat, the National Park Service has begun to radio-collar the few cougars remaining in the Santa Monica and Santa Susana mountains in order to “understand the effects of habitat fragmentation” and to “develop science for educating park visitors and neighbors on living and recreating safely in mountain lion country.” Here’s what they’ve uncovered so far.
Cougar “P-1” is a healthy, 144-pound male whose photo appeared in the Los Angeles Times in December 2003. He ranges from Malibu Canyon to Point Mugu and takes a deer every 10 to 12 days.
P-1 made the papers in early December when a land speculator staked out several goats in a remote area of Malibu Canyon. Taking advantage of the easy prey, P-1 killed several goats. The speculator, in exercising his rights under current law, called in a bounty hunter and dogs to kill the cougar. P-1 was treed, but escaped being shot. The incident caused a strong public outcry and generated considerable media coverage.
At last report P-1 was back feeding on his usual deer diet.
“P-2” is a female ranging a smaller territory in the central Santa Monica Mountains. Some have linked her romantically with P-1, and she may be pregnant.
The Park Service believes P-1 and P-2 have been in the mountains for a while and have learned to avoid people by traveling by night and staying in remote canyons.
There is potential habitat for two more cougars in the Santa Monicas, but the Park Service has found only P-1 and P-2 to date.
In March 2000, a wild cougar was captured at midday in Hidden Hills, a mile north of the Ventura Freeway in the southwest corner of the San Fernando Valley. (The picture in this article was taken by a local woman as the cougar ran along a fence less than 20 feet from her.) According to the Park Service the cougar was “relocated to a place in his home territory” and is “still out there.”
When the state purchased Ahmanson Ranch in the Simi Hills last fall, it was part of the home territory of P-3, a young, 90-pound male cougar. P-3 stayed there through the fall, killing and eating at least two coyotes.
For many years, biologists have been concerned about the increasing fragmentation of Southern California habitat and the barriers to wildlife movement that our freeways represent. A great deal of time and resources has gone into efforts to preserve a few critical “habitat linkages” (for example, Coal Canyon in Orange County and Liberty Canyon near the Santa Monica Mountains). Some time in December P-3 validated all that effort by crossing under the 118 Freeway through a 16-foot-wide equestrian tunnel in Santa Susana Pass and spending several days in the Santa Clarita Woodlands before returning the same way. Since then he has passed back and forth this way sixteen times.
At the end of January, the Park Service captured and radio-collared P-4, a young female, in the Santa Clarita Woodlands. Did P-3 go through that tunnel to visit her? Will there be a couple of kittens coming along in a few months? Stay tuned—and support preservation of local open space.

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