SANTA CRUZ Since the Santa Cruz County Land Trust completed the Laurel Curve Wildlife Tunnel project in January, many animals have been spotted walking under roads in the Santa Cruz Mountains on their way to another stretch of Highway 17. side.
These include animals as small as skunks and squirrels, and as large as bobcats, deer, coyotes and foxes. However, earlier this month, the land trust was able to capture on camera an animal it had been hoping to see since the tunnel was completed: a mountain lion.
Cameras installed by Pathways for Wildlife captured an uncollared male cougar walking through a tunnel at 2:38 a.m. on Nov. 28, and land trust staff viewed the footage earlier this month.
Sarah Newkirk, executive director of the land trust, said this is a very exciting time for the land conservation nonprofit as it validates construction at Laurel Curve Land grounds.
“We have every reason to believe it will work, and this is actually evidence that it does work,” she said. Our innovative spirit paid off, and the vision of the land trust and its partners is now a reality in the field.
Plans for the wildlife tunnel date back to 2012, when the Land Trust, in partnership with Wildlife Trails and researchers from the UC Santa Cruz Cougar Project, discovered that many animals, including mountain lions, were trying to cross the highway . Some even died in collisions with vehicles.
Newkirk said the land trust’s goal is to promote biodiversity by connecting different groups of species to each other. The biggest challenge is how the animals safely cross a busy road like Highway 17.
She said three collisions between vehicles and cougars had been recorded at the Laurel Curve site when the wildlife tunnel project was launched, with a fourth incident occurring during the planning stages.
Additionally, scientists have found evidence of inbreeding in mountain lion populations, Newkirk said.
The Santa Cruz Mountains have a relatively small carrying capacity for mountain lions, she said. Considering the size of a mountain lion’s range, which can actually hold about 60 individuals, mountain lions need to form bonds with other subpopulations in order to maintain genetic diversity.
In 2014, the land trust acquired 10 acres off Laurel Road and over time acquired 790 acres to control both sides of the highway. The program will be funded through the passage of Measure D in 2016 and financial support from the California Department of Transportation, state Sen. John Laird, and then-Rep. Mark Stone.
Newkirk said local Caltrans staff were really important partners in getting the wildlife tunnel built. They were very visionary and ahead of their time in moving the institution forward.
A groundbreaking ceremony was held in April 2022 and construction was completed in January of the following year. Newkirk said less than 15 minutes after the cameras were installed at Wildlife Trail, a bobcat was captured walking through the tunnel. Ten months later, the first mountain lion was sighted using the tunnel.
Seeing a cougar pass through the tunnel is exciting for a group of conservationists. According to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, there are only about 4,500 mountain lions in the state. The number in the Santa Cruz Mountains is even lower, with Project Cougar lead researcher Chris Wilmers estimating around 50.
Most big cats live in large areas of undeveloped, wooded land.
They don’t like open grasslands, he said. They prefer wooded or shrubby areas.
Mountain lions also venture into communities in heavily forested areas such as Bonny Doon and Felton, and have even been spotted in Aptos. Wilmers said they are occasionally spotted in downtown Santa Cruz, but it’s rare.
Wilmoth said top predators like mountain lions are important to the ecosystem, and when they disappear, it has a huge impact. He cited Venezuela’s Lake Guri experiment, where islands were created during the construction of the Guri Dam that were free of large predators such as jaguars. This has led to blooms of leaf-cutting ants and howler monkeys, defoliating forests due to the lack of top predators.
You hate losing any species, he said, but when you lose an apex predator, there are usually really big ecological changes that happen, which can also affect human populations.
So it’s exciting to see wildlife tunnels being used by mountain lions, Wilmers said.
“We’ve been waiting for it and it’s finally been delivered,” he said.
Newkirk said the project is a link in the overall connection between the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Gavilan Mountains, benefiting both humans and wildlife.
Wildlife-vehicle interactions lead to hundreds of accidents each year, she said. It’s just one less thing to worry about when you’re driving down Highway 17.
The next project is a wildlife interchange on Highway 101, which Newkirk said is still in the planning stages.
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