Apr. 17,
2013 — In the first published results of more than three years of tracking
mountain lions in the Santa Cruz
Mountains
In findings
published today (April 17) in the online journal PLOS ONE, UCSC associate
professor of environmental studies Chris Wilmers and colleagues with the UC
Santa Cruz Puma Project describe tracking 20 lions over 6,600 square miles for
three years. Researchers are trying to understand how habitat fragmentation
influences the physiology, behavior, ecology, and conservation of pumas in the Santa Cruz Mountains
"Depending
on their behavior, animals respond very differently to human development,"
Wilmers said. Lions are "totally willing to brave rural neighborhoods, but
when it comes to reproductive behavior and denning they need more
seclusion."
The large
predators living relatively close to a metropolitan area require a buffer from
human development at least four times larger for reproductive behaviors than
for other activities such as moving and feeding.
 |
7F, an approximately 7-year-old mother is treed by trailing
hounds so researchers can replace her collar before the batteries
fail. 7F lives in the mountains above
and has had three litters of kittens in the four years since
she was first collared. (Credit: Photo by Paul Houghtaling)
|
"In
addition, pumas give a wider berth to types of human development that provide a
more consistent source of human interface," such as neighborhoods, than
they do in places where human presence is more intermittent, as with major
roads or highways, the authors write.
37 lions
captured
Wilmers and
his team, which includes graduate students, and a dog tracking team working
with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, have captured 37 lions to
date. Twenty-12 females and eight males-were closely followed between 2008 and
2011. Once captured and anesthetized, the lions' sex was determined, they were
weighed, measured, fit with an ear tag and a collar with a GPS transmitter. The
collars, developed, in part, by an interdisciplinary team at UCSC, including
wildlife biologists and engineers, transmit location data every four hours.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!