The two orphaned cubs, estimated to be about 14 months old, are on their own, wandering the Orange County wilderness.
Source: California Carnivores Program UC Davis Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center
Their mother, called F390 by the UC Davis scientists that spent almost two years tracking her, was killed earlier this month by a car along Highway 74, which is surrounded by the Cleveland National Forest wilderness.
Naturally in the wild, cubs would stay with their mothers for up to two years before splitting off so these two are being left to fend for themselves earlier than usual.
The cubs find themselves in a dangerous middleground, where they are too old to be taken in by a zoo but a little young to have left their mother naturally.
“If the kittens would be younger, since their survival would have been severely compromised in the wild, they would be captured and brought to a rehab facility as we have done in the past,” said Fernando Nájera, who heads up the UC Davis Carnivore Project.
With this being said, they should most likely be alright as former director of UC Davis Mountain Lion Project Winston Vickers said they would have only had three or four more months with their mother.
Still, their biggest challenge is their own youthful curiosity, said Vickers, noting that young mountain lions are more likely to be curious about humans.
“It gets them into trouble,” Vickers said.
“If you actually break it down and look at the types of attacks that are happening, it’s the young male cougars that are the ones that are the most confused about what is food and what isn’t food” said Melanie Schlotterbeck, a Conservation Consultant for the Hills for Everyone organization.
Saving Mountain Lions
The UC Davis Carnivore Project was monitoring the mother, from February of 2024 until she died on Sept. 4th.
Along with UC Davis, groups like The Center for Biological Diversity and an Orange County-based nonprofit, Hills for Everyone, have been working to protect these natural lands and ensure the safety of California’s iconic predator.
Mountain Lions are a California staple, as the state has the densest population out of all of the 16 states they are found in.
Along with being an iconic California species, the large cats are incredibly important to California’s natural ecosystem.
“The reason is, when you don’t have a cougar then you have an explosion of mid level predators” said Claire Schlotterbeck, Executive Director of Hills for Everyone.
The reason this can become an issue is mid level predators are much more effective raiders of bird nests, which can impact bird populations.
With less birds, plant seeds aren’t distributed as well, with those impacts rippling down the entire ecosystem.
The Center for Biological Diversity has worked to ensure state level protection for California mountain lions getting them added as “threatened” under the California Endangered Species Act. The Center has also sponsored several other bills including the California Ecosystems Protection Act of 2023 and the Poison-Free Wildlife Act of 2024 aiming to help with the issue of toxic rat poisons affecting these animals.
The Biggest Threat: Roads
According to the UC Davis Carnivore project – which studies the threats to mountain lion populations – the most deadly are local highways
As development continues and roads widen to accommodate more cars, Orange County’s wildlife often gets left in the dust.
Hills for Everyone works to protect land in the Puente-Chino Hills Wildlife Corridor and a particularly important area that was protected was that of Coal Canyon, an open space corridor that was added to the Chino Hills State Park.
One of the reasons Coal Canyon was so important was that it provided a much needed passage across the 91 freeway.
“There was one mountain lion, M6, and he was the only one going across the 91 freeway and he was doing it only at Coal Canyon,” said Claire.
Along with this, some efforts have been made by organizations such as the local Transportation Corridor Agency to improve connectivity and protect wildlife from the roads.
However incidents like these still happen, for example just last year another one of the mountain lions tracked by UC Davis, F312 or “Uno” was also struck by a car.
Although TCA mitigation efforts- including wildlife fencing, jump-out ramps and undercrossings – seem to work well, scientists and policy advocates say they need to be more widely adapted to make a lasting difference.
Source: OC Transportation Corridor Agencies
Less than a mile from where F390 was hit on Highway 74, there were two designated wildlife crossings that had been used previously by other mountain lions.
The issue is a lack of integration.
“In her (F390) case, fencing very likely would have prevented this fatality. We don’t know her motivation to cross the highway at that spot, but fencing would have made the difference,” said UC Davis’ Nájera
Just this month, the Orange County’s Transportation Corridor Agency approved the implementation of a phased approach to complete the implementation of additional wildlife fencing along the 73, 133, 241 and 261 Toll Roads.
Similar efforts have taken root in LA County where the Annenberg Foundation has worked to erect a large wildlife crossing over the 101 Freeway.
The project was started in 2022, the same year a local mountain lion that captured the imagination of many observers – P-22 – was killed after roaming the Griffith Park area for years.
On top of collisions between mountain lions and cars, roads pose a larger, somewhat more abstract threat of habitat fragmentation.
“I-15 and 91 with the ocean on the other side pretty much isolate the Santa Ana mountain lions,” said UC Davis’ Vickers. “So they’re sitting in an island of habitat with not very good ability to get out of it or have new animals come in”
While the I-15 and 91 seem like the biggest threats, every new road in wildland areas serves to further fragment their landscape.
“Any road through a wildland is a problem,” said Melanie Schlotterbeck.
This fragmentation causes the mountain lion populations to be split up into subpopulations which introduce low genetic diversity and inbreeding.
“This struggling Santa Ana Mountains puma population can’t afford to lose another member,”said Tiffany Yap, a Senior Scientist and Wildlife Corridor Advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, about the death of the cubs’ mother.
While the two orphaned cubs are now on their own, they’re not exactly alone as the UC Davis Carnivore Project is working to track them via camera traps and radio collar them in the near future.
In a previous version of this story, Dr. Winston Vickers was identified as the director of the UC Davis Mountain Lion Project. He is the former director. We regret the error.