LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) – With their habitats more and more threatened across Southern California, environmental advocacy groups are demanding that kingdom officers list nearby mountain lions as an endangered species.
The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Mountain Lion Foundation introduced Tuesday that they have formally petitioned the California Fish and Game Commission (CFGC) to location mountain lions who stay in Southern California and at the Central Coast at the California Endangered Species Act.
The petition includes cougars who roam the Santa Monica, San Bernardino, San Gabriel, Santa Ana and Santa Cruz Mountains, along side the Eastern Peninsular Range.
This petition follows a take a look at released in March which determined that habitat loss, inbreeding and isolation may want to purpose cougar populations inside the Santa Monica and Santa Ana mountains to move extinct inside the subsequent 50 years.
“Our mountain lions are demise terrible deaths from car collisions and rat poison, and their populations are at threat from inbreeding too,” stated CBD biologist Tiffany Yap, the primary writer of the petition, wrote in a announcement. “Without a clear criminal mandate to guard mountain lions from the threats which can be killing them and hemming them in on all sides, these iconic wild cats will quickly be long gone from Southern California.”
Caltrans has lengthy proposed building a flora and fauna bridge across the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills that would permit animals to travel among the Santa Monica Mountains and Simi Hills. Meanwhile, conservationists have proposed taking pictures cougars within the Santa Anas and trucking them throughout the 15 Freeway that will breed with other buddies who are also remoted on the other aspect.
At least 18 cougars had been killed on a limited-access highway or road within the Santa Monica Mountains on account that 2002, according to National Park Service numbers.
Rat poison is likewise posing a grave hazard to mountain lions. Biologists trust a mountain lion observed dead in March within the Santa Monica Mountains probable died of rat poison. Of 22 nearby mountain lions tested in the Santa Monica Mountains, 21 have confirmed the presence of rat poison of their systems, NPS reports. Those protected a 3-month-old kitten.
Last December, a mountain lion named P-sixty four survived the Woolsey Fire handiest to die some weeks later. Like P-forty seven, assessments additionally discovered he had six exclusive varieties of anticoagulant rodenticide compounds in his gadget.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife now has 3 months to decide whether or not to recommend the petition to the CFCG, who will then vote on it later this year.
