Finding the balance between wildlife and recreation

First, let’s calm your fears or burst your bubble: you are probably never going to see a puma in the wild, and if you do it will last a few seconds as you see a flash of its tail running away.

“Pumas tend to be fearful of humans, so most of the time they just avoid us,” says Veronica Yovovich, a postdoctoral researcher with UC Berkeley’s Macaulay Lab. “Some people can live in the Santa Cruz mountains their whole lives and never see one. They’re called ghost cats.” Veronica spoke to us when she was an Environmental Studies graduate student at UC Santa Cruz and a researcher with the Santa Cruz Puma Project, a partnership between UCSC and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

It was a warm winter day in early February on our 8,852-acre San Vicente Redwoods property. We joined her out on the land to facilitate a television production about “living with lions” for NBC Bay Area’s OpenRoad with Doug McConnell.

“Beep, beep, beep.”

“Do you hear that?” Veronica said softly, as she waived her telemetry device that looks like an old rooftop TV antenna. “That’s 38F, an adult female puma. She has a collar for monitoring, and each collar has its own frequency, which is why I know it’s her.”

Veronica explained that pumas are important as apex predators (those at the top of the food chain) in helping maintain a healthy ecosystem. Ninety-five percent of the puma diet is deer (a prey species). This naturally regulates the deer population, which in turn regulates the numbers and types of plants that deer feed on. Losing the pumas will throw the balance out of whack.

There are estimated to be 40 pumas in the Santa Cruz mountains, and puma 38F is one of four pumas known to regularly visit San Vicente as part of its territory. But San Vicente isn’t 38F’s home, That terminology is problematic, as female pumas have a home range of 40-80 square miles and males range 100-150 square miles. Note that males fight to defend their territories and have only small overlaps with other males, while females can overlap with other males and females.

The extensive ranges pumas need for territory, hunting and breeding is one reason why it’s so important to have large intact habitats with connected wildlife corridors. Roads and new development that fragment habitat are the biggest threats to pumas. Fortunately, San Vicente Redwoods is adjacent to more than 10,000 acres of protected lands including Swanton Ranch and Coast Dairies, making it a rich contiguous wildlife habitat--an important component of our vision for flourishing redwoods forests in the Santa Cruz mountains.

Puma Project research on San Vicente Redwoods helps identify where pumas are most active–their main through-routes, their denning sites, and communication hubs (yes, they do “talk” to each other via scrapes, scent and caterwauling)–and this data is informing the location of public access trails planned for the property.

Public access to San Vicente Redwoods is likely to be available in 2022, but once more people are on the property Puma Project researchers will monitor the impact on the puma population. Birds, bats, and fish will also continue to be monitored by other researchers. Any significant impacts will inform changes to the adaptive management plan, helping to ensure ecosystem health over time. We didn’t see any “ghost cats” that day but it is heartening to think that these magnificent creatures are on the land and have a chance to thrive alongside human populations, thanks to the support of people like you.