LA-area mountain lions face a smaller, harsher world after wildfires
LOS ANGELES - Two dozen biologists with binoculars and telemetry equipment fanned out across the smoldering gulches and slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area on Friday to take a preliminary accounting of the damage caused by wildfire to prime mountain lion country.
It was arduous, dusty work, traipsing through shrublands reduced to piles of white ash and denuded canyons. But the data they gathered were cause for cautious optimism.
Of 13 mountain lions with radio collars they had been tracking before the Woolsey fire broke out, scientists confirmed that 12 were alive and moving outside the burned areas in the vicinity of Point Mugu to the west, and from Malibu east to the 405 Freeway, scientists said.
One lion, a sub-adult known as
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