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“A hundred square miles? That’s huge!” exclaimed Scott Morrison, director of science for the Conservancy’s California Program, as he examined “home range” data of one radio-collared mountain lion. The data — beamed via satellite from the collar to a researcher’s computer — resembled a constellation of dots on a map, with each dot representing the cat’s location every day over the preceding months.
Morrison and a team of collaborators led by Dr. Walter Boyce of the University of California Davis Wildlife Health Center are studying the habitat needs of mountain lions in southern California in order to determine how we might better protect native species in landscapes increasingly dominated by humans.
“That a single mountain lion needs so much area makes you realize how important it is to conserve large landscapes — and how challenging that will be in places that are highly fragmented by human land uses,” Morrison continued.
Wildlife Corridors: The Pathways to Successful Conservation
The research team’s focus on southern California was by design: This area has for decades been the focus of mountain lion field research — and of conservation efforts to protect “corridors” for wildlife to move about.
Their study of past research has highlighted how difficult it will be to protect large and interconnected natural landscapes if the only conservation strategy is parcel-by-parcel land protection. This is especially true in rapidly developing landscapes like southern California.
“It’s not just for lions that we need to protect these places and these connections,” explained Morrison. “Plants and animals need room to move around, especially as climates change. And the more these ecosystems remain intact and functional, the more they will be able to provide us with the things we need as well, like clean water, places to play and ecosystems that soak up carbon from the atmosphere.”
Conservation for the Future
But if land acquisition alone is not keeping pace with development — what’s the solution?
“Good land-use planning must be implemented,” asserted Morrison, highlighting California’s Natural Community Conservation Planning program, or NCCP, as an example of planning that works.
“Programs like NCCP map where the most important areas are for conservation, and the most appropriate places for development. What’s innovative is that that ‘blueprint’ is coupled with regulatory and market-based mechanisms, set up to ensure that as development occurs in the ‘gray areas’ of the map, conservation occurs in the ‘green areas.’”
“Policies like this are simply essential,” concluded Morrison. “Clearly, we cannot buy our way — parcel by parcel — to an interconnected natural world. We need the help of those making local and regional land-use decisions.”
Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Kevin Crooks (mountain lion); Photo © The Nature Conservancy (Scott Morrison); Photo © UC Davis Wildlife Health Center & D. Krucki (mt. lion caught on film by a remotely triggered camera).
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