Local extinction of Southern California mountain lions possible within 50 years

March 20, 2019, UC Davis

Two isolated mountain lion populations in southern California's Santa Ana and Santa Monica Mountains are at risk of local extinction, perhaps as soon as within 50 years, according to a study published in the journal Ecological Applications.

The study showed the extinction risk is due to low genetic diversity and mortality that affects the stability of the population. Mountain lion mortality is often caused by humans, but can also result from changes in the environment, such as wildfire and fluctuations in prey density.

The two mountain lion populations in the human-dominated landscape of southern California are isolated by freeways and development. For the study, lead author John Benson of the University of Nebraska and co-authors at UCLA, the University of California, Davis, the National Park Service, the University of Washington, Northern Arizona University, and the University of Wyoming used population viability modeling to predict the possibilities of extinction from genetic and demographic risk factors.

"It's easy to read our paper as yet another pessimistic story about wildlife threatened by human actions—and in a sense that is true," said Benson. "However, there is also a more optimistic message in that our model predicted that these populations can persist with relatively modest increases in landscape connectivity. If we can maintain healthy populations of mountain lions—a species that roams widely and requires such large spaces—here in greater Los Angeles, that bodes well for our ability to conserve large carnivores anywhere."

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Student discovers new species of firefly

June 27, 2015

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

 (Image credit: UCR Today)

While collecting insects in Los Angeles County as part of an entomology class project, a 24-year-old undergraduate student at the University of California-Riverside discovered a never before seen species of firefly.

Joshua Oliva, a native of Guatemala, found the insect while capturing, mounting and identifying 300 insects as part of the class project, according to The Orange County Register. The firefly was recovered from an area of Topanga Canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains.

The discovery was later confirmed by Doug Yanega, head of the campus entomology museum, and experts from the University of Florida. “I’ve been told by other people a number of times, ‘Hey, you discovered a new species,’” Yanega told the newspaper. “This was the first time I’ve given the news to someone else who’s discovered one. It was very gratifying.”

“He wasn’t 100 percent certain it was a firefly, and brought it to me for confirmation,” the curator added in a statement. “I know the local fauna well enough that within minutes I was able to tell him he had found something entirely new to science. I don’t think I’ve seen a happier student in my life.”

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Red-legged frogs may hop again soon in the Santa Monica Mountains - Herp Digest

By Louis Sahagun, LA Times, December 17, 2013,

You’ll know it’s springtime in the Santa Monica Mountains when wildlife biologists start alerting curious visitors to keep their distance from the first red-legged frog reintroduction effort ever attempted in Southern California.

Biologists are gearing up to transfer fragile batches of California red-legged frog eggs from a tiny, isolated population in the nearby Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve to separate streams in the Santa Monicas where the species has not been seen in nearly half a century.

“Our plan to bring them back to the Santa Monicas depends on the strength of this small remnant population in Upper Las Virgenes Canyon,” said Katy Delaney, a wildlife ecologist for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, a unit of the National Park Service. “Those frogs only exist in a few hundred yards of a stream, and one catastrophic event could wipe them out.”

For hundreds of thousands of years, the largest native frog in the western United States thrived in deep year-round pools of water throughout Southern California and much of the state. The species scientists know as Rana draytonii has crimson undersides and can grow to 5 inches in length.

Since the 1960s, red-legged frogs have been decimated by fires, mudslides, pesticides, fungal infections and loss of habitat, as well as the appetites of carnivorous mammals and nonnative fish, bullfrogs and crayfish.

The federally listed threatened species has disappeared from 24 of the 46 California counties within its original range.

The rocky pools edged with mule fat and shaded by sycamores and oaks in the Santa Monica Mountains’ Ramirez and Solstice canyons are prime real estate for the relocation of the egg masses.

“Neither stream has nonnative fish, snails or crayfish, which can tear tadpoles apart,” she said. “So we’re cautiously optimistic about bringing back a population of breeding adult frogs in a portion of their historic range.”

In late February, a team of biologists from California State Parks, the National Park Service, the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey Western Ecological Research Center will begin transferring the eggs to the streams.

To protect the eggs and tadpoles from voracious mammals and insects, they will be placed in porous bags and boxes anchored near the surface of the water. The tadpoles will be released sometime in the summer.

“I’d love it if in a few years we had red-legged frogs galore,” Delaney said.