Last updated May 1, 2008.
Nature isn't necessarily nice. Behavior and interactions among animals are often violent. So it is with mountain lions. But the mountain lions of the Santa Monica Mountains also have to cope with the additional problems of living on an island of lion habitat in the middle of an ocean of urban sprawl.
The mountain lion tracks above were photographed on a run at Sage Ranch Park in late January 2000 . They might have been made by a young male mountain lion designated P3, whose territory encompassed this area. There is also a possibility there were from an older female lion, P4 that frequented the Rocky Peak area. Unfortunately both these animals were killed in late 2004 by eating prey (coyote) that had eaten rodents that had consumed anticoagulant based poisons. These poisons are used by parks, schools, golf courses and housing developments for rodent control.
The P3 and P4 pumas were tracked as part of a ongoing study started by the National Park Service in 2002 to learn more about mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. As of May 1, 2008, eleven mountain lions, P1 to P11, have been tracked, and their history has been quite a saga.
P1 was the first mountain lion to be captured and collared. Now estimated to be 11 years old, he is a large 140+ lb. male whose territory is essentially all of the Santa Monica Mountains. Only one female, P2, was known to be in P1's range, and in August of 2004, she and P1 produced a litter of four cubs -- two males (P5 and P8) and two females (P6 and P7).
Despite high hopes for the lions and their new litter, things turned ugly in August of 2005, when P1 killed his mate P2. A few months later, in June of 2006, P1 also killed one of the 22 month-old females from the litter, P7. According to biologists these were not the actions of a lion run amuck, but were most likely related to conflicts over kills, or in the case of P2, a mother protecting her offspring.
As might be expected, the young males from the litter, P5 and P8, headed for opposite ends of P1's territory. However, urbanization and limited linkages essentially prevented their escape to other wildland areas.
Early this September 2006 P5 was likely killed by P1, and in a development that surprised researchers, P8 appears to have been killed by an unknown lion, probably male, inside of P1's territory.
So now P6 is the one surviving lion from P1 and P2's 2004 litter. Will she survive? Will aging P1 continue as the top male lion, or will the unknown cat prevail? Will P6 produce a litter? The mountain lion saga continues...
Update May 1, 2008. NPS wildlife biologists are currently aware of 4 lions in the Santa Monica Mountains -- 2 recently radio-collared young males designated P10 and P11, and P1 and P6. There is probably at least one more female, the mother of P10 and P11. A remote camera picture has also been taken of a lion in the Simi Hills.
Update January 25, 2008. An article in the Simi Valley Acorn reports that on January 13, 2008, a mountain lion was discovered in an abandoned building near Chatsworth Reservoir. Two days later there was another mountain lion sighting in the nearby Simi Hills by employees at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory.
Update August 7, 2007. According to an article in the Malibu Times, on July 31 a five or six year old mountain lion, was hit by a car near the tunnel on Malibu Canyon Road and died shortly thereafter. The mountain lion, designated P9, was recently collared, and along with P1 and P6 was one of three mountain lions being tracked by the NPS. There is speculation that P9 may have been the unknown lion that killed P8.
Note: There appears to have been some confusion in press reports regarding the designations and genders of the various lions -- in particular the offspring of P1 & P2. I have checked the P-numbers and genders of the lions described in this post with wildlife biologists involved in the mountain lion study and believe them to accurate.
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