Santa Cruz Puma Project: Investigating Mountain Lion Behavior in a Human-Dominated Landscape

Join Ph.D. candidate Yiwei Wang to discuss what it means to be next door neighbors with a large carnivore, the mountain lion or puma. Yiwei will talk about how these elusive predators navigate the Santa Cruz Mountains and try their best to steer clear of humans. However, as the human population of the area grows and expands into previously undeveloped lands, pumas find it more difficult to stay out of trouble, sometimes with fatal consequences.  The Santa Cruz Puma Project is a partnership between UC Santa Cruz and the California Department of Fish and Game that is focusing on developing a state-of-the-art wildlife-tracking collar and studying wild mountain lions in the Santa Cruz Mountains to better understand their physiology, behavior, and ecology and the impacts of habitat fragmentation.  Yiwei Wang, her advisor Dr. Chris Wilmers, and their collaborators have now captured and collared 39 mountain lions in the Santa Cruz area and published their first study in PLoS One in April.  Find out more about their research by checking out SantaCruzPumas.org and reading an article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel about their latest puma, 39M, found in downtown Santa Cruz!