An interesting, lengthy cougar story from the Santa Monica Mountains near L.A. appeared the other day in the LA Times (By Amanda Covarrubias)
Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He has been a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and also its President. For many years he produced Ralph Maughan's Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of "Hiking Idaho." He also wrote "Beyond the Tetons" and "Backpacking Wyoming's Teton and Washakie Wilderness." He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
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An interesting story, hyped by the ‘hollywood” factor in this area. The real story is that Los Angeles County, which includes several mountain wilderness areas and butts up against the Angeles National Forest, has no shortage of mountain lions. Lion sightings are very common in the northern county which includes cities like Pasadena (the Rose Bowl is adjacent to prime habitat).
Glendale and Burbank (NBC & the Tonight Show) also have substantial populations in their wilderness mountain areas. The 210 Freeway which passes thru Pasadena and Glendale has seen its share of road kills of lions.
Southern California lion populations are growing in spite of this Santa Monica Mountains situation. The problem is that it is politically incorrect to deal with this animal in this area as anything but an “endangered” species. For that reason there is much press attention to this “population decline” in this very limited area.
Thanks for the additional information, Mike.
I could tell this was an interesting story, but I couldn’t think of a single worthwhile comment of my own to add.