Friday, September 16, 2016

Wild LA: urban lions, bears, coyotes (video)

Xochitl, CC Liu, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly; Kellie Galentine

View of a portion of expansive LA with skyline looking toward Orange County far beyond in smoggy distance from Runyon Canyon, Hollywood (Chris Goldberg/flickr.com via scpr.org)
Tongva: This land the European invaders call "Los Angeles" is really called Tovanger.
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Pocahontas was married off.
When ecologist Justin Brown examines the stomach contents of a dead coyote [a type of canine that lives in the woods rather than the city like the common dog], he never knows what he’s going to find.
 
“I’ve seen barbecue chicken in their stomachs. I’ve seen cat food, guavas, mice, rats, gophers,” he said. “I mean coyotes are omnivores, so they can take advantage of almost anything that’s edible.”
 
Brown has been studying coyotes for a decade, and for the past year he’s focused exclusively on urban coyotes in Los Angeles as the head of the National Park Service’s Urban Coyote Project.

Coyote C145 walks near a construction site in the Silver Lake neighborhood near downtown L.A late in the evening June 3rd. National Park Service Ecologist Justin Brown tracks coyotes living near DTLA. Some of the coyotes are fitted with radio collars (Stuart Palley/KPCC).
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By capturing coyotes, fitting them with radio collars, and releasing them again, he’s been able to track their movements.

And he has made some surprising observations, like that coyotes can live in densely populated neighborhoods and aren't afraid to dart across freeways.
 
But one simple question has evaded him so far: What do they do for food?
 
It’s important to know what animals eat because their diet tells us why they live where they do.
 
Los Angeles is obviously good habitat for coyotes -- they wouldn’t be here otherwise -- and now Brown wants to know why.
 
Knowing what urban coyotes eat may also help avoid conflicts with humans. More + AUDIO (5:18)
Santa Monica Mountains' black bear may be the first seen in over a century
KPCC FM Staff (scpr.org,

Keep California wild!
Camera traps picked up the presence of black bear in Malibu Creek State Park on July 26, 2016, the first in a century.

There's no population of bears in Los Angeles' Santa Monica Mountains (by far the largest urban nature reserve in the country) and it's rare for a bear to travel into these mountains.

Cameras caught a black bear in Malibu Creek State Park in the Santa Monica Mountains recently.

Yeah, keep it wild, and keep dogs leashed.

It's a very unusual sighting, as the Santa Monicas haven't had a local bear population since the 1800s when grizzlies lived in the area.
 
The National Park Service's Zach Behrens says researchers spotted the black bear in pictures from National Park Service camera traps.
 
"It looks like the bear is just walking by the camera. Our camera traps are triggered by motion sensors, so when something goes by like a bear, it definitely would trigger that," Behrens says.
 
They don't know for sure where the bear came from, Behrens says. But black bears do live in the nearby Santa Susana and San Gabriel mountains -- over on the north side of the 101 Freeway. More + AUDIO
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Lions born near Los Angeles, two new litters
Kellie Galentine

An LA puma, a.k.a. mountain lion (National Park Service via AP via KPCC/scpr.org)
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Where the lions of Los Angeles live
The Santa Susana Mountains have five new residents, and their cuteness factor is a welcome distraction from news of email scandals and war.
 
National Park Service researchers discovered two litters of mountain lion kittens last month, making them the 10th and 11th litters to be tagged at a den site.
 
The first litter discovered June 8 includes two females whose mother is 6-year-old P-35, according to a statement from the National Park Service.
 
The second litter -- one female and two males -- was found in a cave-like area hidden behind boulders on June 22. Their mother, P-39, appears unimpressed by the camera spying on her hidden haven in the video below. More

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