Cougar, puma, and mountain lion are all names given to the same big cat. And while they are considered the most widely distributed large wild mammal in the Western Hemisphere their solitary nature and avoidance of humans make encounters with them extremely rare.
When one of these primarily nocturnal creatures does come in close contact with people, it is most often because they’ve been struck by a motor vehicle. Such was the case around 12 p.m. noon last Saturday (6/24) when an adult female uncharacteristically made her way to a residence in the Yucca Mesa area, laid down, and, according to staffers from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, succumbed to injuries consistent with a vehicle strike.
The mountain lion is a “specially protected mammal” in California.
That protected status came to pass as recent decades have seen their populations suffer from habitat loss. Inbreeding is another threat; groups of mountain lions are increasingly isolated as busy freeways restrict movement. Motor vehicles pose a serious threat to mountain lions in Southern California. Habitat loss compounds the problem. They are solitary animals that require wide areas in which to hunt, mate, and thrive.
Another threat comes in the form of rodent poison; rodenticides work their way up the food chain and into these large cats.
A National Park Service/ UCLA joint study showed that nearly 90 percent of Southern California’s cougars have traces of rat poison in their systems. And while sightings are rare, Morongo Basin features a major wildlife corridor or habitat linkage that runs through our communities linking Joshua Tree National Park, the Maine Air Ground Combat Center, the Pioneertown Preserve, and on to the Sand to Snow National Monument.
This web of interconnected linkages enriches our area, provides a literal path to biodiversity for wildlife such as pumas, bobcats, bears, and other mammals, and supports our desert ecosystem in numerous other ways.
