Tracking LA’s cougars and coyotes
Sightings of cougars and coyotes around and within America’s second largest city are striking, if not completely shocking, given that they’re two of the continent’s more adaptable creatures. In findings recently shared by the National Park Service, scientists were surprised by just how close to humans the animals hunt and live.
- Mountain lions or cougars, like this one in the Santa Monica Mountains of Los Angeles, rely on deer as their main source of food. (National Park Service)
- Biologists call these mountain lion kittens P-48 and P-49. (National Park Service)
- Two of the Los Angeles area’s newest mountain lions; the baby mountain lions were captured on video in the Santa Susana Mountains north of the city. (National Park Service)
- One of C-144’s pups pauses on a porch in 2015. C-144 was spending most of her time in the Westlake neighborhood, a densely populated area just west of downtown. (National Park Service)
- C-144 trots down a street in Westlake shortly after midnight in July 2015.(National Park Service)
- National Park Service biologist Justin Brown uses radio telemetry to pinpoint C-144’s location. (National Park Service)
- Two coyote pups walk down a street west of downtown Los Angeles. The National Park Service used a radio collar to track their mother, C-144, in 2015. (National Park Service)
- A coyote known to biologists as C-144 crossed a street last year in the densely populated Westlake neighborhood, west of downtown Los Angeles. An analysis of 100 of C-144’s recorded GPS locations found that 18 percent were on roadways. (National Park Service)