California mountain lions are getting new protections under state law

from Rachel BeckerCalMatters

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Just weeks after that a mountain lion wandered in San Francisco, state officials voted to permanently protect populations of the charismatic carnivores that roam the coastal mountains between the Bay Area and the Mexican border.

Mountain lions are one of the last large carnivores ecosystems in balance. They eat on deer and other animals, leave the remains of scavengers, raptors, and other wildlife, and help maintain plant-prey-predator balance.

But locked in concrete cages, killed by cars and sickened by rat poison, isolated mountain lions along California’s coast risk inbreeding, scientists and state wildlife officials say.

Members of the California Fish and Game Commission voted unanimously to list six groups of mountain lions from the Central Coast and Southern California as endangered under the California Endangered Species Act.

These mountain lions make up about a third of the roughly 4,200 solitary brown cats believed to roam California.

Dozens of people spoke before the board today, from ardent wildlife advocates to fierce opponents of free-roaming predators and rural residents concerned about their livestock and livelihoods.

The listing of mountain lions is consistent with the state’s existing ban on hunting mountain lions for sport and prohibits harming or “taking” them except by permit under certain conditions. It may also increase their priority for limited conservation grants and other funds.

More importantly, advocates say, it would trigger habitat protections — including under California’s landmark Environmental Quality Act.

Builders push back

State and local planning agencies must determine whether projects such as new roads, buildings, or other developments may harm protected species and their habitats and require developers to reduce that harm whenever possible.

As for mountain lions, advocates and scientists hope the listing will reduce further habitat loss and fragmentation in areas already carved into isolated pockets by roads and cities.

“If we want to sustain mountain lion populations in these coastal regions, we’ve got some work to do,” said Chris Wilmersprofessor of wildlife ecology at the University of California, Santa Cruz and principal investigator of the Santa Cruz Puma Project.

The builders disputed some of the details of the listing, but did not oppose granting mountain lions protected status.

In a letter, the Building Industry Association of California and the Building Industry Association of Southern California warned that the state’s current habitat maps could force developers in urban areas to undertake studies and mitigation efforts that would “significantly increase project costs and schedules.”

Protecting mountain lions is a map of a rich enclave in the Bay Area already tried to play in a gambit to block denser housing – to the disdain of housing and wildlife advocates alike.

Conflict because of conflict with wildlife

Ranchers and residents of the hilly, remote Bay Area and Central Coast suburbs also say more protections could spur more mountain lion attacks on people and livestock and harm ranchers’ livelihoods. Some sent the commission pictures of injured livestock.

“People have them on camera all the time eating house cats off people’s porches, dogs being dragged in broad daylight right in front of their owners, and children being mauled,” Greg Fontana, whose family has farmed coastal San Mateo County for generations, wrote in a letter to the board.

It’s rare for lone cats to attack people—and even less often for attacks to be fatal. Cougars are known to have killed six people over the past 136 years — soonest a young man in 2024 in El Dorado Countyoutside the area where mountain lions are now listed as endangered.

However, attacks on livestock and pets have increased in recent decades, according to a state report. But state wildlife officials also note that such attacks increase for every mountain lion killed or relocated in the previous year. One theory is that younger males move into the vacated territory, where less experienced hunters chase slower domestic animals and livestock.

Listing mountain lions under the state’s Endangered Species Act also doesn’t prevent wildlife officials from intervening in conflicts, according to Steven Gonzalez, a spokesman for the Department of Fish and Wildlife. The law still allows the department to “issue permits to take … listed species for “management” purposes, which may include management of mountain lions that kill pets and livestock.

Mountain lions have been under temporary protection under the state’s Endangered Species Act while the state considers whether to list them under the Endangered Species Act. Even at the time, Gonzalez said the department issued such permits to scare away or relocate problem mountain lions. He “expects to continue to do so … evaluating each situation on a case-by-case basis and continuing to prioritize non-lethal methods.”

Inbreeding to extinction

Scientists and conservationists say mountain lions’ time is running out: Physical signs of inbreeding, including kinked tails, testicular defects and deformed spermhave already appeared in cougars flanked by highways in the mountains of Southern California.

With a curled tail where the end is sharply bent like an “L”, doesn’t seem to harm a mountain lion, Wilmers said. But they are an ominous sign that the population is reaching alarming levels of inbreeding. No fresh gametes swimming in the gene pool, the iconic cougars of the Santa Ana and Santa Monica Mountains risk extinction in the coming decades as inbreeding begins to affect reproduction and survival, scientists warn.

Even populations further north struggle to find non-relative mates.

Wilmers remembers the first time he saw a coiled tail on a trail camera in the Santa Cruz Mountains. “It was definitely an ‘Oh my gosh’ moment,” Wilmers said. “This is really happening.”

To combat the many threats—from inbreeding and car crashes to rat poisons and wildfires—the Center for Biological Diversity and the Mountain Lion Foundation petitioned in 2019 to add Central Coast and Southern California mountain lions to the state’s endangered species list.

“These populations are facing a whirlwind of extinction,” said Tiffany Yap, science director for urban wildlands at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We need these protections to get more connectivity on our roads, in our development, so they can move freely.”

More than six years later, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife agreed. In December, a staff report recommended, with some changes to the protected area, that California list these mountain lions as threatened.

Roaming room

California is already taking steps to connect cougar habitat — sinking millions of dollars at highway intersections to allow wildlife to pass safely over or under cars and trucks which scientists report killed hundreds of mountain lions for seven years.

Yap says that’s not enough — and the recent visit to San Francisco by a cougar is a prime example. Young males disperse to find new territory and mates away from their relatives and other more dominant males.

But with no trails to suitable habitat, they could find their way to Yap’s neighborhood in Pacific Heights, where the 80-pound cat found herself squeezed into a narrow space between two apartment buildings.

Yap was across the street watching California Fish and Wildlife Biologists and Veterinarians from the San Francisco Zoo, trying to capture the cougar, which they eventually tranquilized and released into the Santa Cruz Mountains.

For her, it drove home the importance of protecting — and connecting — the mountains that lions call home.

Wilmers agreed. “There’s always going to be mountain lions bumping into San Francisco. But right now, that’s all they can do,” he said. “We’d like to get to where they can find ways through this maze of urban and suburban development to the next mountain range above.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.