The Ultimate Urban Cats
Environmental political prisoner?
ONE OF HOLLYWOOD'S COOLEST CATS is no party animal. Rather, the only mountain lion known to reside in Los Angeles’ popular Griffith Park is a loner. Despite sharing his home with millions of annual visitors during the past three years, just a handful of people have seen him. Further, some of the United States’ busiest highways isolate him and his feline relatives in the Santa Monica Mountains from other mountain lions—leading them to live private yet precarious and, at times, violent lives that ultimately could cause their demise.
To help mountain lions safely navigate this dense urban area, NWF launched the Save the L.A. Cougars campaign in September. The Federation is supporting the research of U.S. National Park Service (NPS) scientists tracking the cats’ movements as well as the construction of a wildlife crossing over or under one of these highways. “Carnivores are the ultimate challenge for conservation in a landscape like ours,” says NPS Ecologist Seth Riley. “They need a lot of space. If any group of animals is going to be affected by loss of habitat and fragmentation, it is carnivores.”
A month after a remote camera first photographed Griffith Park’s lion in February 2012, Riley and NPS Biologist Jeff Sikich captured and fitted the then 2-year-old cat with a GPS radio collar to follow where he moved through the park. Genetic testing revealed the young male was related to the mountain lions they had been studying in Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area about 30 miles away. They have tracked 35 Puma concolor (called, among other names, mountain lions or cougars) from that population and the surrounding region, and as Griffith Park’s lion was the 22nd puma, he became known as P22.
Like any young male lion, he probably was dispersing to find his own territory. However, unlike six other males that were killed by vehicles in the recreation area, he successfully navigated two eight-lane highways, 101 and 405, before settling into his city park home. Now those freeways and residential development encircle him.
Trapped!
Male mountain lions usually have home ranges of more than 200 square miles. While P22 has been able to survive in his relatively small 10-square-mile range mainly by feeding on the park’s abundant deer supply, his urban lifestyle has not left him unscathed. Earlier this year, the NPS scientists had to recapture P22 to replace the battery in his radio collar. They found him thinner, with his ears crumpled, eyes swollen and skin scabby. He was infected by mange, caused by a parasitic mite that weakens wildlife and domestic animals. They also found rodenticide in his blood. The bobcats and coyotes that eat rodents—and on which P22 occasionally snacks—are often contaminated with rat poison. ...
California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has been pursuing funds to research and build a wildlife crossing over or under this highway at this very location for more than a decade. ...
Apparently Caltrans views constructing a wildlife corridor as roughly equivalent to the Manhattan Project, which only took four years. Yes, lets build that corridor, or crossing, as soon as possible, but in the meantime, do we really want to see this mountain lion remain "Trapped!" eating rat poison, plagued by mange and obviously hunting a mate that does not exist in his teeming urban prison?
Granted, it is a major step to relocate wildlife, especially a mountain lion, requiring a government permit and all that, but apparently this animal has already been sedated and examined a couple of times--why not moved? The article says a move to the Santa Monica Mountains also presents hazards. Undoubtedly, but couldn't this poor guy be moved to a larger range than either Griffith Park or the nearby Santa Monica Mountains? Shouldn't there be some reward for successfully crossing 16 lanes of freeway beyond being occasionally shot with a tranquilizer dart, manhandled, weighed, measured and being pronounced poisoned, mangy and endangered?
It seems likely that if P22 does not die of poisoning or getting shot by gangbangers, or getting 'put down' after reflexively running after and attacking some hapless jogger, that in search of a mate, he will eventually try to recross 16 lanes of freeway. If any of these things take place while we are breathlessly awaiting another 10 or 20 years to finally achieve the fabled in story and song Caltrans Wildlife Corridor Apollo Moon Mission, a lot of people will be responsible, some of them 'environmentalists.'
By the way, I feel an extra level of frustration being an environmentalist who is not worried about appearing unfashionably politically incorrect, and so I can see the ultimate futility and absurdity of trying to save California, and U.S., wildlife as our Open Borders Overlords are determined to infinitely redouble and Third Worldize U.S. population numbers. Eventually all present and past environmental efforts will not survive their own coming fate with 16 lanes of freeway. And considering these policies have been adopted, always without a vote of the people, in all Western nations, likewise will Western civilization itself be reduced to roadkill.
So be sure to take another good look at P22. You, and especially your grandkids' grandkids, may have more in common with him than you think.
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