Bay Area Lion Research Puts Connectivity on the Map

Researchers are tracking wild cats in the Santa Cruz Mountains and getting press while they do it. They have collared 9 cats in the first year of a five-year research project. The collars will provide detailed information about when and where lions travel, whether they are using existing wildlife corridors, and how they manage to coexist with people in the urbanized region in the southern Bay Area.

Captured adult lions are fitted with a global positioning satellite (GPS) collar that provides locations in the form of GPS coordinates. Up to this point, preliminary data show that the cats prefer remote territories, but routinely skirt the edges of active neighborhoods to get from one part of their habitat to another.

"For the most part, they travel where they can be least seen," said Wilmers, assistant professor in UCSC's Department of Environmental Studies.

But no matter how secretive they are, these lions face major obstacles, including the formidable Highway 17; a major corridor connecting Santa Cruz to the greater Bay Area.This thouroughfare perfectly bisects the lion habitat in the Santa Cruz Mountains. One cat was struck and presumed killed by a car on this highway in July 2008.Click here to see the full size image.

Researchers hope to identify key movement pathways that allow connected populations of lions to traverse between undeveloped montane habitats, and target them for conservation.

Development threatens to cut off movement corridors across the landscape and isolate populations to small islands of habitat where they would be doomed to die out. Without connectivity between other ranges, such as the Diablo Mountains, the smaller, isolated populations would go extinct one by one.

The research findings will inform local land use planning, allowing researchers to identify lands that need to be conserved to preserve connectivity for wildlife. This is one way of identifying important wildlife linkages- on the ground. Getting information about lion habitat use is the first step in a long process to identify key movement areas, and these researchers are well on their way.

The Bay Area Puma Project is a collaborative research effort between U.C. Santa Cruz, the California Department of Fish and Game, and the Felidae Conservation Fund.

Wildlife Crossings Are Nice, But Habitat is Better

You may have heard that the Arizona Game and Fish Department biologists conducted a marathon aerial capture effort last week. The captures are part of ongoing research studies aimed at facilitating safer wildlife movement across roadways. This is great news, but wildlife crossings alone won't suffice to preserve wildlife populations. What more can we do? Read on...

AGFD Biologists collared 10 pronghorn antelope in the Chino Valley last week. The GPS collars will provide detailed movement data that will pinpoint exactly where crossing structures should be placed to keep the herds roaming freely.

Wildlife crossings in the Chino Valley can't come quickly enough. If you've followed the plight of the pronghorn in the valley, you know that various herds have already been walled in by roads, fences, and housing developments sprouting up like so many weeds (didn't know about pronghorn's inability to cross fences? check out this video of pronghorn trapped on a highway).

In fact, the herd trapped in Willow Valley may be doomed to "die out" there. They've been effectively isolated by urbanization. They can't leave because they are surrounded by housing developments, golf courses, and major thoroughfares. They can't exchange genes with other populations since there is no way in or out, so even if they do manage to survive on their urban island, they will eventually succumb to inbreeding depression, and no, that doesn't mean that they will get very very sad.

Wildlife Crossings are great. They provide a way for animals to cross highways safely and make the landscape more permeable-- connected wildlife populations can thrive, roaming and reproducing freely and avoiding the perils facing small, local populations trapped in isolated habitats. Crossings can prevent the Willow Valley scenario from happening to pronghorn herds in the future.

But here's the catch: Crossings don't mean a thing if there isn't any habitat to cross into. Building crossings in the Chino Valley can only help the pronghorn if there are matching efforts to conserve pronghorn habitat on both sides of the crossings. With the ongoing rampant development in the valley, it's entirely possible that by the time the crossings are built, there will be a stripmall or cookie-cutter housing tract slated for either side of the overpass. And they will probably be named something like Pronghorn Hills Shopping Plaza, or Antelope Flats Community....but I digress.

My point is that conserving land should go hand in hand with building crossings. This will require a proactive collaborative approach by the agencies and conservation organizations to identify and acquire key wildlife habitat in the area.

AGFD seems to be way ahead of the game, a leader among state agencies in terms of their research and dedication to building wildlife crossings. I hope that we can leverage their work with parallel efforts to conserve wildlife habitat and ensure the functionality of wildlife crossings.