Trapping Mountain Lions Part 5: The Ghost Cat of the Santa Monica Mountains

For previous chapters on trapping mountain lions at the Grand Canyon, click here.

It was early and the light was low as the sun rose slowly over the Los Angeles basin--perfect for tracking. Usually a dense misty fog hung over the Santa Monica Mountains on mornings like this. But this was a clear, cool September morning. Just a few days before my birthday.And I was thrilled to be spending it here with Eric, wildlife capture specialist, coworker, and most importantly at the time- my boyfriend. We were looking for any signs of a mountain lion passing through this area and heading towards our trap.

He noticed the tracks first. They were crossing the wide, well-trodden trail we were following amidst foot prints and mountain bike tracks. Lions tend to prefer more cover than the trail could offer. We went off trail following the tracks, dropping into a steep drainage, heading down the mountain through the thick foliage. The Santa Monica Mountain range runs about 40 miles east to west from the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles, to Point Mugu in Ventura County. The mountains form a barrier between the San Fernando Valley and the Los Angeles Basin, separating "the Valley" on the north and west-central Los Angeles on the south. I plowed my way through the thick mediterranean understory typical of this area, scrambling over rocks and under branches, deflecting them with my arms.

Eventually the drainage started to level out and the overstory opened up a bit. We followed a narrow game trail through the canyon bottom. Eric paused behind a large boulder, "Are you ready?" I nodded. We stepped around one side of the boulder to get a glimpse down canyon toward our trap, a foothold snare. There she was. The last female mountain lion in the Santa Monicas, and the first lion I'd ever seen in the wild. I was surprised at the red hue of her coat. Maybe it was the low light, maybe it was the distance. But she was beautiful.


Photo caption: P2 "trapped" in the Santa Monica Mountains

She looked back at us, then turned her head away and tried to take a step forward, but stopped short. Her left front paw was in the foothold snare. She was P2, the second lion discovered to still be living in the wild urban island that is the Santa Monica Mountains. The first lion discovered, P1, was a large male, and the only other lion known to live inside the National Recreation Area. The math is simple. If P1 and P2 meet and hit it off, there will be more lions in the Santa Monicas. If not, it could be what biologists call a "local extinction," meaning the population would die out. Sure, its only one little population. But imagine that there could be additional local extinctions in other habitat islands throughout the county, the state, the country....and the bigger picture starts to come into focus.

P2 was wearing a GPS collar, but the battery was running low. We wanted to replace her collar so we could continue monitoring her movements and document her success or demise, whichever came first. We headed back up to the trail, then back to the truck. We didn't want to make her any more anxious than she was by hanging around, and we had to get the capture equipment ready. Eric made a few calls to round up the crew while we programmed the new collar. The rest of the team, along with some local press were soon on their way. Catching one of the last two lions in these mountains was no insignificant matter. The Santa Monicas are adjacent to the second largest urban metropolis in the U.S- Los Angeles. People around here are interested in how and where the lions are making a living in this urban-wildland interface. Are they crossing roads? Freeways? Passing through neighborhoods? Hunting along the highly-used trails? and When, exactly?

Historically, this kind of information has been hard to gather. Lions are supremely elusive. That's their niche, their job if you will. They hide. They glide through the landscape without a sound. They ambush their prey before it even knows they're there. Most people never see one, though they may come across tracks or old kills. Because of their stealth, they've been called the "ghost cat." But technology can shed some light on their habits. GPS collars send out precise locations stamped with the time and date to the biologists tracking the collared animals.

After waiting what felt like hours, the team was assembled. Together we headed back down toward the trapsite. It seemed further this time, the thick foliage made thicker by our heavy backpacks filled with the capture equipment we would need to sedate, collar, and document P2's capture. We crawled through patches of poison oak. Branches whipped my face and forearms in the backlash of the people ahead of me. One by one we gathered at the large boulder ahead of the trapsite and waited while Eric went ahead to assess the situation. The anticipation was palpable. For many, this would be their first lion. Those who'd assisted with the previous captures of P1 and P2 were just as anxious as the newbies. P2 and the hope she represented seemed to hold a special place in their hearts and minds.

We were dumbstruck when Eric came back shaking his head. The trap was empty. P2 had managed to pull her foot out of the snare while we were away. And just like that she was gone. I was in awe of her stealth and cunning, the sly cat that outsmarted us just when we were sure we had her. I'd just caught a glimpse of the "ghost cat" of the Santa Monicas.

For the next story in the series on Trapping Lions, click here.

The Only Good Ocelot is a Live Ocelot


Just last week, the Sky Island Alliance announced that they took a photo of an ocelot with a remote camera in Cochise County. This is exciting news- the first confirmed evidence of a live ocelot in Arizona since 1964.

The very next weekend, Arizona Game and Fish officials collected the carcass of what they presume to be a wild ocelot on the side of State Route 60.

The two bits of news scream simultaneously, "we've got ocelots!!" and, "how can we protect them?" Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that Arizona has a recent history with first discovering, and then (accidentally) destroying rare and endangered wild cats. This may be an opportunity to make up for it.

According to Arizona Missing Linkages, the ocelot was listed as an endangered species in 1982 in the U.S., where only two known breeding populations remain-- in southern Texas. In Texas, ocelots occur in the dense thorny chaparral of the Rio Grande Valley. The loss and fragmentation of their habitat, along with vehicle collisions appear to be the biggest threats to these little cats. Currently, the greatest known cause of direct mortality for the ocelot is roadkill.

Historically, ocelots ranged in the U.S. from Arkansas to Arizona. The last confirmed Ocelot in Arizona was taken in the Huachuca Mountains in 1964. There is dearth of data regarding ocelot occurrence and habitat usein Arizona.

If, as evidence is suggesting, ocelots are roaming the wilds of Arizona, its high time we take action not to kill them. They need connectivity throughout critical habitat to support viable populations. This requires landscape planning at a broad geographic scale. Within that habitat they need protected wildlife corridors and associated wildlife crossings along major roads. Roads are deadly to, well, virtually every species known to man including man himself. Not only do they serve as a barrier to wildlife movement, but they're a significant source of direct mortality. Imagine driving the car that killed the last ocelot. What a burden to bear. I hope this incident will help propel action to preserve wild cats.

A Burrowing Owl on the Hopi Res


Burrowing owls, like mountain lions, are crepuscular. That's a fancy way of saying that they're most active during sunset and sunrise. I know this because I've just begun studying them for a project in the Mojave Desert. I've been mapping habitat suitability to help preserve habitat for these little guys before it gets developed. This will help prevent populations from getting get wiped out by habitat destruction, which is happening all over Central California right now.

Last night, far away from the hustle and bustle of the owl wars, I had the chance to see one of these desert dwellers up close and personally.

I'm on the Hopi Reservation, where developments are few and far between. Richard lives in a housing development near Polacca. He told me that he'd seen a pair of burrowing owls previously, while hiking in a wash near Highway 264. I asked him to take me there. We stepped out his back door and headed west into the sunset. The sky was fierce. Dark menacing clouds closed the gap between earth and sky, and a solitary pink streak spanned the horizon, evenly slicing the space between clouds and earth. We walked across soft, sandy soil that gave underneath my foot with each step. The wind howled as we trudged forth. We caught a glimpse of a group of feral dogs, getting wilder and skinnier by the day. They used to belong to someone, but they were kicked out to fend for themselves. Now they're eeking out a life in the desert, running along the rim of the canyon we're headed for.

We dropped into a narrow side canyon and were enclosed by sandstone walls almost immediately. The canyon was made deeper by the recent rains scraping the debris off the canyon floor. This is how the Grand Canyon was formed, I think. The wind became a distant whisper once we were inside the canyon's walls. As we closed in on the junction with a larger canyon, Richard pointed to a ledge about 20 feet high in front of us. "They were up there last night." As he spoke, I saw something move.

"There's one." A little owl took flight from the base of the rock wall. It perched on the top of the wall and surveyed us, standing motionless. It looked even smaller than I have imagined them, with stilt-like legs, back lit by the violet sky. The little silhouette didn't make a sound. I didn't either. We watched eachother for a few minutes, then just as suddenly as it had appeared, the owl took off. It caught an updraft and flew across the narrow strip of sky above the canyon. It landed out of sight behind us, somewhere near the wild dogs. I hope he can escape them, if he needs to. We turned and hiked out the way we came. When we topped out of the canyon, the howling wind pushed against our backs.

"Hoo-hooo." We heard a two-syllable call coming from behind us. I turned my head to try to get a better idea where it was coming from, but all I got was an ear full of wind. I turned back around. "Hoo-hooo." The call followed us into the moonlit night as we ambled away in the darkness.

Photo credit: Richard Alun Davis, 2010

Ocelot "Spotted" In Arizona


Unless you study wildlife in the southwest, you may be asking, what's an ocelot? It's an elusive little spotted cat that once inhabited the southern U.S. What the population was like is hard to say in terms of how many there were or what their exact range was. Records are, well, spotty.

Back in the days when Arizona Game and Fish was doling out bounties for what they considered "worthless predators," they called the native wildcats by so many different names that its hard to tell what was what. In a book on the history of the management of the Kaibab deer herd, there are lists itemizing the number of bounties paid per feline "species." The confusing thing is that the "species" list included not only the standard known cats like mountain lion, bobcat, and jaguar, but several additional names like wildcat, leopard, tiger, and more appear. Huh? How many cats, er, how many species were here? Dunno. But we do know that ocelots once inhabited parts of Arizona, and appears to be making a comeback.

The Sky Island Alliance is a Tucson-based regional conservation group that has been monitoring wildlife and their movements through non-invasive methods like camera trapping. This past November, one of their cameras captured an ocelot --the first modern and verifiable record of this elusive wild feline alive in Arizona. According to a member of the ocelot recovery team, the cat that was spotted is likely a disperser from a nearby population. "Nearby" is relative--the closest known population is over 100 km south of the border.

In the United States, the ocelot's current distribution is severely limited. Up until this finding, they were known to remain only in small areas of very dense thicket in 2 counties in South Texas. While they were designated an endangered species in 1972, the ocelot's continued presence in the U.S. has been questionable enough that critical habitat has never been designated. Their numbers were reduced by predator control programs, and according to Wikipedia-- as a result of dogs, being shot by ranchers, loss of habitat, and the introduction of highways.

Sky Island Alliance biologist Jessica Lamberton spells out the significance of this rare spotting- “That an ocelot is here in Arizona tells us that the habitat is healthy, and the connection between healthy landscapes is still a possibility for ocelots and other species.” Go Cats!

A Guide to Species Distribution Modeling

I recently came across this great document at the Biodiversity Informatics Facility web site. It's a guide to species distribution modeling for conservation educators and practitioners published by the American Museum of Natural History.

The guide will walk you through the theoretical and practical use of GIS and data to create predictive distribution models for virtually any species in virtually any region. Using species occurrence records, survey results, museum collections, or whatever resources may be available, you can characterize the environmental conditions that are suitable for the species. Once those parameters have been determined, you can use various algorithms to model the spatial distribution of environments that meet those criteria. Voila, you have a predictive model that identifies potential habitat for the species. Okay, so maybe it's not quite that simple, but you can check out the guide for more specifics on the steps involved.

The guide is freely available for use by non-profits and non-commercial educational use. I love it when people who want to save the world make their tools and knowledge available for others to use in the same vein. A fundamental part of conservation should be that we all cooperate and share knowledge and tools for the greater good. Kudos to the biologist(s) who put this guide together and made it available on the web.