A 5-year-old feminine mountain lion who died in March is the primary mountain lion within the Santa Monica Mountains to die of problems from mange, in response to a Nationwide Park Service research.
P-65 was discovered lifeless on March 4 close to a stream within the central Santa Monica Mountains. She was extraordinarily emaciated and her case of mange, a extremely contagious pores and skin illness brought on by parasitic mites, was extreme, particularly on her face and head, the park service mentioned.
A necropsy revealed that she had additionally been uncovered to a number of rat poisons or rodenticides.
Within the greater than 20 years that the Santa Monica Mountains Nationwide Recreation Space has been finding out mountain lions by collaring and monitoring them, a number of have been discovered with mange and efficiently handled, mentioned Jeff Sikich, a biologist who leads the research.
“All of those animals recovered from their mange illness as greatest as we may inform from distant digital camera pictures or later examination,” Sikich mentioned in a launch. “Nevertheless, in P-65’s case, we didn’t find out about her illness till after she had died.”
Nevertheless, research of bobcats within the Santa Monica Mountains and within the Simi Hills have proven that notoedric mange was a “main supply of mortality” for the cats because it was first documented in 2001.
“This analysis has proven a powerful correlation between extreme mange and the extent of publicity to anticoagulant rodenticides,” the park service mentioned.
The poisons have an effect on the bobcats’ immune methods, making them extra prone to contracting mange and fewer capable of combat off the an infection.
A number of mountain lions which were documented with mange had additionally been uncovered to rodenticides. The park service additionally famous that just about each puma has been uncovered to the poisons, with six collared lions and one uncollared animal documented to have died from rodenticide publicity.
The park service referred to as P-65 “an attention-grabbing cat to check” due to her exploits, which included efficiently crossing a deadly freeway and surviving a serious wildfire.
She was first captured and collared in 2018, and she or he survived the Woolsey hearth that broke out that November. Her house vary was “solely” inside the burn space, the park service mentioned.
“Throughout this time she largely used the southeast nook of the burn the place there have been some sizable, unburned islands,” the park service mentioned.
P-65 was solely the second collared feminine lion to cross the 101 Freeway and transfer into the Simi Hills earlier than returning to the Santa Monica Mountains a couple of weeks later.
She gave delivery to kittens in 2020, two of whom had been killed this yr on roadways; P-89 died in July on the 101 in Woodland Hills and P-90 died in August on Freeway 33 south of Ojai.
