Are cougars glamorous?
The New York Times just published an article about mountain lions today (June 10th) that features a photo of our own Paul Houghtaling handling 39M, the downtown puma. The article talks about the return of the "glamorous killer", a curious adjective choice except for...
Update on 39M, the Downtown Puma
Here is an update on lion 39M, the young male that turned up in downtown Santa Cruz last month. In short, he appears to be doing well, as interpreted from GPS locations and examination of a few sites where he’s killed and eaten prey. GPS locations indicate that 39M...
Meet 38F
In all the excitement surrounding 39M, we didn't get a chance to introduce our newest conventionally captured cat, 38F. 38F was captured in the large and relatively undisturbed Cemex Redwoods property earlier this month using Dan's hound dogs. Paul and company located...
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...
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...
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
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...
Meeting the Neighbors
We recently recaptured puma 29F. The batteries on her collar were many weeks beyond the estimated date it’d run out of power. Typically, we recapture and replace the collar on a puma with a safer margin of battery power, but apprehending 29F was a real challenge....
A tale of two pumas: 16M and 17M’s final chapters
Last week we visited the final resting places of two of our male lions, 16M and 17M. In both life and death, these two lions embodied the diversity of fates that may befall pumas living in the Santa Cruz Mountains. 17M was a small, 2 year old male when we first caught...
Los Gatos loses a gata: RIP 11F
This week, using GPS locations from her collar, Paul and Chris F. located 11F's final resting spot in the hills above Los Gatos, a town named after her ancestors. From what they could see, she seems to have died of natural causes in January, far from roads, people's...
