This article was initially featured on High Country News.
On Nov. 8, 2018, defective electrical gear in Californias Woolsey Valley sparked a wildfire that enveloped the Santa Monica Mountains. The Woolsey Fire burnt via practically 100,000 acres of land on the western fringe of the higher Los Angeles space, destroying over 1,600 constructions and killing three folks.
This mountainous panorama is the house territory of LAs legendary mountain lions, which have held on right here regardless of urbanization and habitat fragmentation. But the hearth eradicated half of their remaining habitat, together with 88% of the nationwide park land within the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. Rachel Blakey, now a professor at Cal Poly Pomona, lived in LA on the time of the hearth and commenced to marvel how the lions had been affected.
I used to be a very large fan of the LA mountain lions, as most Angelenos are, Blakey mentioned. And I assumed, my goodness, whats occurred? How has this wildfire impacted them, after they have already got this type of hemmed-in space?
The outcomes of Blakey and her co-authors analysis had been revealed in Current Biology on Oct. 20. Using GPS monitoring to map the lions travels and accelerometer information to file their exercise, she and her collaborators in contrast the animals habits throughout the 15 months earlier than and after the hearth.
Two lions died within the fireplace, however many extra struggled to outlive within the years that adopted. Blakey described the charred panorama as a moonscape with out the vegetation and canopy that the cats have to ambush their most popular prey, mule deer. The lions prevented the burned areas and took higher dangers looking for higher habitat, crossing busy highways. When they entered the territories of dominant males, interspecies battle resulted.
Researcher Jeff Sikich, who has studied the Santa Monica inhabitants for greater than 20 years and labored on the analysis with Blakey, mentioned in an interview that extra mountain lions are killed by automobiles than every other trigger. If the hearth pressured them to cross roads extra typically, much more deaths had been doubtless.
A younger male often called P-61 survived the hearth, however in searching for out extra appropriate habitat afterward he grew to become an oblique sufferer of it. He was the primary collared mountain lion recorded crossing the 405, a significant freeway with heavy site visitors. His preliminary crossing was profitable, however he inadvertently entered the territory of one other male, which attacked him and drove him out. Later, he was recorded considering a second crossing. But this time his luck ran out, and he was struck and killed by a automobile.
In the aftermath of the hearth, some residents expressed fears that mountain lions would transfer into extra urbanized areas, the researchers reported. But their monitoring confirmed that the cats solely marginally elevated their time in such areas. The cats have a robust tendency to keep away from these city areas, Sikich mentioned, and that remained true even after the hearth. On common, they spent solely 5% of their time in city areas, with even the boldest spending not more than 15% of their time there. When a mountain lion often called P-64 was caught between a burned space and a busy city house, he selected the smoldering vegetation over the possibility of human contact. He was critically burned, and, unable to hunt, he died.
Winston Vickers, a wildlife veterinarian and researcher with UC Davis, works with a equally remoted mountain lion inhabitants within the Santa Ana Mountains on the jap facet of LA. He has additionally seen circumstances the place animals would quite danger a fireplace than encroach on human areas. Were getting an increasing number of (remoted populations), particularly in locations like coastal California, Vickers mentioned. He mentioned that the examine is necessary for serving to researchers perceive how fireplace can affect remoted populations.
