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    Puma Tracker

    Over the last 20 years animal movement data has become one of the primary tools in managing and conserving wildlife. Its helping scientists better understand the ecology of everything from albatross and bluefin tuna in the oceans to antelope and cheetahs on land. But how often does the non-scientist actually get to see and play [...]

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    Capturing a Mountain Lion

    We’ve made a video of the mountain lion capture process explaining everything from looking for tracks to capturing and collaring the mountain lions themselves. If you’ve never seen redwoods glistening in the sunlight, or hound dogs picking up a fresh scent, or a mountain lion descending from over 40 feet up in a tree, then [...]

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    High-Tech Collars

    Wildlife tracking devices have come a long way since the 1960’s. Back then scientists attached balloons to the backs of seals so they could follow them around the ocean by boat. Today GPS tags allow you do get dozens of locations a day on your study animals without leaving the comfort of your office (except [...]

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    Habitat Fragmentation

    Habitat fragmentation is among the top threats to wildlife worldwide. Think about it. Just about everywhere you go in the world today, there are roads, houses and/or farms. For some species like coyotes, deer and raccoons, this is a great thing. But for other species like elephants, wolves and tigers it can spell doom. Here [...]

39M waking up from capture

The Downtown Puma – 39M

Today, we collared our newest puma, 39M, a young, dispersal-aged male in the most bizarre capture scenario imaginable. Instead of finding him using hound dogs among redwoods or trapping him in a cage with some road-kill deer, we found 39M in downtown Santa Cruz, near Ocean St and Soquel Ave, trapped in a narrow aqueduct [...]

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Frequently Asked Questions

During recent talks and outreach events we’ve had some questions from local landowners about our puma data. Just to clear up any misunderstandings, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife does not allow us to make real time location data available to the public. We do, however, post delayed tracking data on the collared pumas [...]

Here's our fearless leader Chris holding a research collar

Cougars in the SF Chronicle!

In case you missed it, the San Francisco Chronicle had a feature story about our new study on their front page earlier this week! Check it out at http://www.sfchronicle.com/science/article/Cougars-in-the-mood-stay-far-from-humans-4447530.php  

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First published study out!

Check out the UCSC news release on the first paper coming out of the Puma Project! The great thing is that our paper is published in PLOS (Public Library of Science) One, an open-sourced journal. This means that anyone can read our paper for free as long as you have internet access. So, check out [...]