Sonoma Valley research on mountain lions gets underway

Remember those “wildlife cam” photos of mountain lions skulking through the wildlife corridor region near Sonoma Valley Regional Park this past fall? Now the Audubon Canyon Ranch has announced it will be taking things to the next level by starting the ACR Mountain Lion Project, a community-based research and education program in the Mayacamas Mountains that will bring greater understanding of North America’s largest wild feline.

Quinton Martins, wildlife ecologist at Bouverie Preserve and an international expert on large mountain cats, will spearhead the project. It will track mountain lions using GPS collars, evaluate their range and diet, and eventually find ways that government and private parties can work together to assure the health of Sonoma’s mountain lion population.

Why mountain lions? Biologists speak of “charismatic megafauna” as being important to their research because the “sexy” species like tigers, lions, snow leopards, even elephants and polar bears, attract public interest and sympathy. So it could be with mountain lions.

“This stems from my work in South Africa,” said the 43-year-old former safari guide and founder of the Cape Leopard Trust there, “where I saw how valuable it was to be using a ‘sexy’ species like the leopard to attract attention to what we were doing.”

The South African wildlife project had exactly that effect, leading to more study and understanding of eagles, small prey animals, even community projects to neuter dogs and cats. “Once you’ve got people’s attention with this charismatic cat, then you can work with them from there. You can start explaining how these predators fit into the ecosystem, how it works, how they influence other components of the environment.”

Like the Cape leopard, the mountain lion is an apex species whose presence is an indication of a healthy environment – not just for cats, but other animals as well. “If you remove mountain lions, what happens?” asked Martins rhetorically. The logical outcome would be an increase in the number of deer, their primary prey, he says, but that’s just the start.

“What happens if you’ve got too many deer, and no one’s eating them? You’re going to have more car accidents, you’re going to have the deer eating all the vegetation, the vegetation structure is going to change – which means you won’t have the same bird species birds or butterflies… Everything is really impacted.”

Martins career has taken him on an over-two-decade journey throughout much of Africa, Saudi Arabia and the United State, in search of greater knowledge of the world’s big cats. He spent over a decade as a safari guide in southern and east Africa, tracking animals like leopards on foot and “connecting with them, if you like.”

But he came to chafe at the limitations of being just a guide. “I was in the right place doing the wrong thing,” he said. “I really wanted to expand my involvement and contribution to what I was so fortunate to experience.”

So he went back to college, and graduate school, as a “mature student” to end up with a doctorate from the University of Bristol, based on his Cape leopard researches. He and his wife Elizabeth, also a wildlife specialist, and their young daughter Ayla moved to California just over a year ago, and Martins started working on a project with the Snow Leopard Conservancy, based in Sonoma.

But the project he was working on was stymied by the Nepal earthquake and the political situation there; and, as the ever-moving Martins said, “I needed to keep busy.”

He took his proposal for a mountain lion research project to Audubon Canyon Ranch, and they jumped at it. “ACR was the perfect match for it, really, particularly the mission that they have and what the mountain lion project represents.”

“ACR believes that conservation is successful when people feel personally connected to nature,” their release on Martin’s project reads. “The ACR Mountain Lion Project will provide school-age children an opportunity to learn about these animals in a greater conservation context while dispelling myths that contribute to a culture of fear around predators.”

The culture of fear around predators – that’s one thing that gets Martins’ goat, so to speak.

“I think that this project would hopefully be able to dispel myths about mountain lions, and if there is a landscape of fear surrounding mountain lions, that the information and the knowledge that we share with the public will help alter that.”

First phase of the project will begin as soon as they get permits from the state Fish and Wildlife department. It will include cage-trapping 15-20 mountain lions and fitting them with collars with GPS transmitters, so Martins and other researchers can track their movements, figuring out exactly where they spend their days, their nights, their travel routes – and where they congregate to eat a kill.

But don’t expect this research to result in a kind of Safari West for mountain lions. “These animals are very elusive, very secretive – I don’t see that there’s any great likelihood of taking groups out to track lions and see them.”

Still, he notes, ACR takes over 10,000 people a year on education walks, and having more knowledge about the role of mountain lions in the ecosystem – and how they are out there now, part of our environment – can only be positive.

Martins is well aware that Sonoma County has private and commercial interests that might seem at odds with wildlife conservation. “We are very interested in engaging with landowners in the study area,” he emphasized. “If they have any conflict or potential conflict issues with lions we would be in a great position to offer advice, visit their properties to see what the issues might be and how to mitigate them.”

For now, Martins and his family live on a rural home on Hood Mountain, where black bear and, yes, mountain lions roam. “It’s really amazing to know that they’re there,” he said. “How cool is that? It really represents some form of wilderness, and of habitat health.”

But the restless safari-guide-turned-scientist isn’t satisfied with what’s cool today. “If mountain lions were all gone, we’d really have to start questioning what’s happening, and what the effects would be.”

Contact Christian by email at christian.kallen@sonomanews.com