ON AIR: Steve Pavlik on the Thin Line Between Humans and Animals

An Audio Interview with Julie West, MLF Broadcaster

In this edition of our audio podcast ON AIR, Julie West interviews Native American Studies Teacher Steve Pavlik about the Native American view of mountain lions and other large carnivores. Mr. Pavlik discusses the field of cognitive ethology, explaining that animals have rational thoughts and emotions not unlike people. With a better understanding and respect for the mountain lion, Steve Pavlik believes we can promote a more humane treatment of all wildlife, as well as reform Fish and Game management agencies.

Listen Now!

Listen to the interview from MLF’s ON AIR program, podcasting research and policy discussions about the issues that face the American lion.

Transcript of Interview

Intro: [music] Welcome to On Air with the Mountain Lion Foundation, broadcasting research and policy discussions to understand the issues that face the American lion.

Julie: Hello, my name is Julie West with the Mountain Lion Foundation. I look forward to speaking with today’s guest, Steve Pavlik. Steve teaches Native American studies and native science at Northwest Indian College in Bellingham, Washington, and has over 30 years of experience in American Indian education.

He holds masters degrees in both American Indian studies and in American history from the University of Arizona. Mr. Pavlik is the author of an upcoming book The Navajos and Animal People: Essays in American Indian Ethnozoology, and he’s edited two other books; A Good Cherokee, A Good anthropologist: Papers in Honor of Robert K. Thomas and Destroying Dogma: Vine Deloria, Jr. and His Influence on American Society.

He has also published over 60 other articles, essays, and reviews, and chapters in anthologies on mountain lions and on Mexican wolves. He has lectured and presented extensively in the field of Native American studies. His areas of academic specialization include Native American religions and spirituality, ethnozoology, cognitive ethnology, and environmental ethics.

Mr. Pavlik is a naturalist and an activist who has volunteered with numerous environmental organizations including Defenders of Wildlife, The Sierra Club, and The Sky Island Alliance. His special interest is large carnivore conservation, and he has been especially active in campaigning for the reform of wildlife management policy as it relates to carnivores. So welcome, Steve. Hello.

Steve: Great talking to you, Julie, and thank you for inviting me today.

Julie: Yes, and I’m really intrigued to speak with you for a number of reasons but some of my other guests have been wildlife scientists or maybe have come from a wildlife management background and so I look forward to speaking with you because you bring the academic scholarly perspective and also the Native American perspective which I think will shed light in a unique way on the subject of mountain lion ecology.

As a place of starting, your bio mentions that you’re engaged in cognitive ethology, and that’s a new term for me. I loved learning a little bit about it, but it’s the study of the emotional and behavioral lives of animals. I thought you could start by telling us about this area of academic specialization in your studies.

Steve: Sure. I’d be happy to. I guess in a nutshell people who consider themselves to be cognitive ethologists basically believe that animals are individuals, that they possess rational thought, that they possess rational conscious thought, including self-consciousness, that they’re sort of blessed with a rich range of emotions very similar to what you or I might possess.

I can’t speak for all people who identify themselves as being cognitive ethologists, but for me, I think wildlife management talks too much – particularly when it comes to carnivores – about instinct. The topic today, of course, is mountain lions, that mountain lions are unpredictable, that mountain lions act strictly on instinct and so consequently you treat them in that respect. Where as somebody from my perspective, you consider mountain lions to be thinking – well from a Native American standpoint, certainly – thinking beings just like you or myself.

Julie: Yes. Interesting. You had also motioned this is kind of a brave new world, and I don’t know how long ago that statement was made, but is that true? Is cognitive ethology a relatively new branch of animal behavior science?

Steve: You know, it really is. Its origins are old, and if you go back in time in to the 1870s, no-less a scientist than Charles Darwin wrote a book on animal emotions, and he described emotional views of animals in his book. But then, for the next hundred years or so the field sort of languished. Nobody was really doing much of anything.

Finally, we have a few scholars who popped up like Donald Griffin and Marc Bekoff and some others who in recent years have been doing really a lot of writing in that field. Often times the research in cognitive ethology deals with domesticated animals or sometimes it deals with the so-called higher animals like whales and dolphins and primates. My interest though is carnivores.

Julie: Do you think that an orientation toward cognitive ethology, especially as it might become part of the mainstream dialog, could potentially begin to influence policy and some of the wildlife management practice with that as the backbone?

Steve: I definitely believe it can and sort of – well jumping a little bit ahead, I teach at Northwest Indian College as you mentioned, and we’re a tribal college up in Washington State. Our student body is almost totally Native American, and we have the country’s only four-year Bachelor of Science degree in native environmental education. It’s our goal to produce tribal wildlife managers who perhaps see things differently than mainstream wildlife managers.

In fact, right now I’ve developed a class which I plan on teaching in the fall on indigenous cognitive ethology because I think that Native Americans have always been cognitive ethologists. They’ve always believed that animals can think, that animals are conscience, that animals have emotions. So it has to begin somewhere, and I’m hoping that it will begin with the Native American tribes in this country.

Julie: Yes, and hopefully those voices can become part of the dominate culture’s way of dealing with animals as well.

Steve: I really hope so.

Julie: This may be an interesting segue as well then. In many indigenous ancestral stories, the boundaries between the human and nonhuman worlds, which include animals, were often blurred. I’ve been fascinated by tales of transformation or shape shifting where a man might marry a woman who’s really a bear or a mountain lion for example and then spend part of the year with her animal family, and I love these stories.

I see them as stewarding strategies because if you’re related, you presumably won’t exterminate a species but you’ll safeguard its survival. I thought you could speak to some of these perspectives as they’re understood in your work with Native American communities.

Steve: You’re correct about Native American thought versus western thought. If you look at mainstream societies – Judea-Christian background – the Christian creation stories, so to speak, tells us that man was created first and that man was created in gods image, that animals came to be created later on, that man was given the power to name animals. He was given dominion over animals. Consequently most people in western society have just been brought up with the attitude that it’s a separate creation. It’s just two different – there’s us and there’s sort of them.

Whereas in Native American culture, if you look at many of the creation stories, man really wasn’t created first. It was the animals who came before man and then man sort of came – this is not true will all tribes but with most tribes I’m familiar with – man was created later on. Consequently there was no idea of dominion over the animals. In fact most tribes talk of the time when man and the animals and even the deities could walk together, talk together. They lived and communicated with each other and so there was – you used the word blurring, and I think that’s probably a good a term as any.

But I think there was a very thin line between humans and the animal world, and the thinner that line is, the easier that line, I think, is to cross. In many of these stories, animals had that power of transformation. In many native stories you have accounts of humans marrying animals and so on and back and forth and children who were part animal and part human. In that way of thinking of things if you – there’s a big difference between looking at a mountain lion and seeing him as just simply an animal, perhaps a resource, more likely a problem or a nuisance, as apposed to looking at a mountain lion an seeing him as a relative.

Julie: That’s a nice way of putting it.

Steve: It’s a big difference.

Julie: Yes. We’re all related. I wonder how people can hold that thought as they are concerned about coexisting with animals such as predators like cougars. I know that cougars are elusive creatures who aren’t likely to strike out at a human or kill a human but there does seem to be this fear that really triggers people. How can we coexist with large predators?

Steve: I think part of dealing with any other being whether it is human or its one of what Navajos refer to as being the animal people, I think any relationship has to begin with respect. In the past, we just simply haven’t shown much respect to animals like lions and particularly carnivores and predators. We teach our children to fear them.

I was thinking when I was a kid growing up, I used to watch Wild Kingdom and different animal programs on TV. I just watched them constantly. But today when you turn on the television, whether you’re watching Animal Planet or The Discovery Channel or whatever, they tend to be more – it’s like animal programming on TV has entered into a phase of reality TV or their version of reality. You’re more likely to see something like When Animals Attack or When Animals Go Wild or The Top Ten Animal Attacks or something like that. I think it’s just really up to us to teach our children that there is a different side of these animals and it begins with respecting them

Julie: And also, in so many instances, people are encroaching on wildlife habitat. They’re choosing to live in these pristine, beautiful areas where their home is maybe right where animals need to access the waterways or large tracts of land. It’s no surprise when predators wander through your property. Again, how can people practically coexist if they’re choosing to live in these places where there are likely to be animals?

Steve: Well, that’s another thing. We hear from pretty much every game and fish department that mountain lion populations are exploding all over the country. It’s like everywhere you look, there’re mountain lions. I guess I am one of those people who believe, if anything, that mountain lion populations are probably in decline in this country.

I think you’re probably seeing more lions because their habitat is shrinking, and we are pushing them out of their territory, and we’re forcing them to come down into our towns.

The other thing, of course, is we create our towns as gardens where deer come in and feed, and of course the mountain lion follows the game. I think back to a Navajo view of things. Navajos say that when you see an animal that is sort of out of place or he’s in a place or location where you normally do not see him, then what is happening is that animal is trying to reach out to you, that animal is trying to send you a message.

I think that these lions that are coming into these urban areas are trying to send us a message and that message is that we have to stop destroying their habitat and stop pushing them out of their habitat. I think it’s time we listen to the animals who are trying to speak to us.

Julie: And you’ve written about the jaguar too, haven’t you? And its historic range in the Americas, especially the recent case concerning Macho B, the jaguar who was killed. Maybe you could speak to that.

Steve: It does point out – for your audience who may not be familiar with the story, the American southwest has historically been home to jaguars for forever. In recent years, like so many other animals, we’ve hunted them, we’ve pushed them out of their range and there’re only a handful of jaguars left in the entire American southwest.

A number of years ago they photographed a jaguar who they then went on to call Macho B. This jaguar for a period of almost 12 years was photographed with remote cameras in a particular mountain range in southeastern Arizona. But the entire time, Arizona Game and Fish Department was bent on capturing this animal, putting a radio color on him, and tracking him, even when he became an elderly cat.

To make a long story short, because it is a long story, eventually they did catch him and they injected him with drugs to put him to sleep and then they put a collar on his neck and he wandered off up onto a rock ledge and he never really moved again. They had to come in a week later and because he was so weak, at that point they could just basically pick him up and they had to bring him in and they wound up euthanizing him. It was a tragic story that angered a lot of people because it was a classic example of mismanagement of wildlife in this country.

It also goes into what we are talking about today. From a Native American perspective, you don’t have to put a radio collar on that animal to track them and learn every nuance of his life. You know that jaguar was out there, he was out there for perhaps 16, 18, perhaps 20 years, and he was a mystery to people. But there are some mysteries that we’re not meant to know. There are some mysteries that we are not entitled to know.

But western society has an attitude that’s contrary to that and so we wound up killing this magnificent animal who might very well be the last jaguar in the American southwest. And when you figure that we’re putting up the boarder fence between the United States and Mexico, which would preclude any other future jaguar from coming up from Mexico, those are the things that we bring upon ourselves

Julie: Right. And I know collaring is such a hard one even for me. I get, on the one hand, that the collars are giving you vital information about their migratory routes and maybe that you could use that information to better advise game and fish departments or even transportation, how we think about our infrastructure and where we make our bridges and highways. But on the other hand, as you say, they’re are doing just fine out there.

Steve: It’s a scientific tool, but you really wonder how much you can learn from a population of one animal.

Julie: Um, hm. Now you’ve worked with some other cougar biologists. I know Harley Shaw is one cougar biologist you have worked with. Maybe you could just talk about some of the things you did with Dr. Shaw and anyone else you want to group in that category.

Steve: I’ve known Harley for many years now. In addition to the work I do with tribes and the Native American aspect of mountain lion conservation, I also – I’m certainly not a scientist. If anything, I guess I would classify myself as a naturalist in that area.

But many years ago, Harley got a mountain lion study going in the Huachuca Mountains in southeastern Arizona. It was a study that was very – it basically was a track count survey, and for almost – I may be wrong on the dates, but – I think for almost a 20 year period, Harley, and the people who followed after Harley, ran these track counts in Huachuca Mountains for this period of time recorded where the mountain lions were, and so on, and that’s how I got to meet Harley. I worked on that track count for many years myself. So did other people.

Julie: So you were just tracking them and that’s maybe different way of understanding their range instead of just collaring them or actually trapping them the old fashion way

Steve: And I think increasingly, people are starting to move toward less intrusive means of studying wildlife. That idea of radio collaring and so on and so forth – I think we pretty much learned all we can learn about basic mountain lion behavior through radio collars and tracking. I think it’s just a matter of keeping track of animals, keeping track of these animals when they come into urban areas and so on. I think those are things that we need to know.

Julie: I know you have been critical of Arizona Game and Fish. It does seem like game and fish departments are often in a front line position to – as first responders – to orchestrate the strategies that will ultimately affect that lion’s future. And I wonder if you could talk about some of the more successful strategies you know of – translocation for example of an animal – there might be other examples and maybe some of the worst case examples as well.

Steve: I think game and fish – I know a lot of people within various game and fish departments, and I think the vast majority of people who I’ve met and worked with are certainly good people. I mean they don’t get into wildlife management because they hate animals or something like that.

In many cases I think they are limited to some of the things that they do. I know that in Arizona Game and Fish, for example, one animal that I have done research on for many years – I’ve done a lot of black bear research over the years and there was a there was a case back in the 1980s I believe, where there was a young woman who was mauled by a black bear up in the Catalina Mountains in Arizona. And she sued Arizona Game and Fish for two and a half million dollars and got it.

Julie: Oh, my.

Steve: She received that money. And from that moment on, there was a marked difference in the way Game and Fish dealt with moving animals from one place to another. My work with bears showed that up until that event, 80% of the “problem bears” that they trapped, they relocated elsewhere. After that event, 80% of the problem bears, they euthanized. You could see that sharp line when they changed their policy.

And I think that Game and Fish departments are very reluctant, very scared of being sued by the public and that’s a very real concern. A lot of times I think, for example, they exaggerate the dangers of mountain lions and bears just to keep the distance between mountain lions and bears and humans, and I think that is sort of unfortunate.

At the end of the day, though, game and fish departments primarily serve two masters: one are the land owners and the second ones are the hunters. They want to keep the land owners happy so they can keep the land open for hunting and that’s where they get their money from.

I think that mountain lions and predators are up against a stacked deck. They’re viewed a being competitors and viewed as being public dangers, so we tend to manage carnivores very badly.

Julie: Seems like we need those creation stories to be part of our collective thinking again, but it seems like that’s a slow transition.

Steve: It is.

Julie: I had a friend that told me about visiting Indonesia. One of the parks in Indonesia was closed on certain days of the week presumably because the monkey gods would be angered if you came into the park. I loved thinking on that as a national park strategy to give the land a break, (laugh) to give the creatures in the park a break by again reviving or putting the myth story out there. It’s folkloric yet it’s practical because the park gets a break.

Steve: Well, I think those are the things we really need to do. I think one of the things that we also need to move to, and I don’t think that the political winds in this country are favorable, especially now towards that, is granting legal rights to the natural world.

Unfortunately you can move into an area and poison the water and clear cut the forest and fence up an entire area for cattle or whatever the case may be and the animals that are in there have to simply move on or become exterminated.

Julie: Right. They’re a by-product of that larger process.

Steve: And that’s one of the things I like to do when I’m working with tribes because if there were any people on this continent who one would hope would be most receptive to the idea of – and what I’m really talking about here is constitutionally guaranteeing rights for the natural world and the wildlife – it would be the tribes to whom it was always a natural part of their heritage

Julie: Can you give a hint, then, of your upcoming book The Navajos and Animal People: Essays in American Indian Ethnozoology and maybe tell us something we can look forward to in reading this book

Steve: Sure. The book started out actually – it was a product many years in the making. One of my professors at the University of Arizona was the famous Sioux scholar, Vine Deloria, Jr. Vine one time invited me to sit on a panel on Native American religion at a conference that we were attending and I told him at the time I said, “Vine, I really don’t know that much about religion.” He said, “Well you know about Navajos. You know about animals. So why don’t you do a presentation on Navajos and animals?” So I said ok.

I wound up presenting a paper on the Navajo relationship to bears and that was very well received. So the next year, on that same panel, I wound up doing a paper on, I think, Navajos and wolves, and the next year it was coyotes, and the next year it was jaguars, and the next year it was snakes, (laughing) and so over a period of time I wound up presenting about 10 of these papers. I don’t know if I did this consciously, but I realized that all these animals that I had been writing on were predators, carnivores.

At any rate, people have been talking to me over the years about cleaning up these articles, putting them together, and coming up with a book. That’s kind of the genesis of the book. There’s this chapter in there on bears, one on mountain lions one on wolves, coyotes, jaguars, snakes, eagles, and another concluding chapter on smaller predators as well.

Julie: Talk about the chapter on mountain lions a little bit. Do you get into some of the actual Navajo ceremonies that are related to the Mountain Lion as a sacred cat?

Steve: Yes, ceremonialism is obviously a part of that. There’s so much to tell. In the beginning when people emerged, Mountain Lion was one of the original deities that were there. There was a Mountain Lion in capital letters, capital “M,” capital “L,” who was very much like the Navajos would be.

I would be tempted to say the Navajos viewed mountain lions and bears and other animals anthropomorphically, but at the same time that’s sort of a human way of looking at things.

In other words at the beginning, all the beings sort of had a shape and a lot of times when Navajos tell these stories and they imagine these animals in another time like in a creation story in the time before time, so to speak, they’re in the shape of human beings.

Mountain Lion in the early stories is one of the most important of the Navajo deities. He’s one of the leaders of the Navajos, of all the animal people. He’s always been admired because of His strength and His courage, His stealth and His speed, and His intelligence and so on. So Mountain Lion at the very beginning was seen as being one of the important deities. Later on as the Navajo stories go on, and as the Navajos came to be as a people, Mountain Lion was also assigned to be a protector for one of the major Navajo clans. In this role, Mountain Lion sort of protected the people against enemies.

There was the story of how the Navajo were attacked at one point by an enemy which some anthropologists believe were probably the Ute Indians. After the Navajos had been beaten up very badly by the Ute, they asked for the Mountain Lion’s help, and he attacked the Ute and tore them up and protected his people. At that point there was concern that now that Mountain Lion had tasted human blood, so to speak, that could we ever fully trust him again. At that point, he was told he needed to live apart from the people, and he went up into the mountains, and he became the mountain lion as we know today. So that was kind of the origin of mountain lions.

Julie: Have you seen a mountain lion or had any experiences with mountain lions that you would like to share?

Steve: You know I am one of those people who really have not been blessed with seeing a mountain lion in the wild. I have done a lot of mountain lion tracking over the years and there’ve been literally times when I have gone up a trail with fresh snow on it, gone up to the top of the mountain, started back down the trail and found mountain lion tracks on top of my tracks.

Julie: Oh, my. (laughs).

Steve: Because mountain lions are sort of like – they’re cats and are very curious and they do like following people. They do like observing people and I think that there is probably a lot you can say about. They mean you no harm, no malice but they’re just sort of curious. That’s always a wonderful experience when you know that you have one on these animals who is out there following you around (laughs).

Julie: Well, we need to close soon and this is maybe closing on a broad note, but I watched a lecture by your friend and colleague, Dan Wildcat, Power and Place: Indian Education in America, and he talks about the difference – and he admits that this is a very crude distinction – between western philosophy and indigenousness philosophy; western philosophy having more of an obsession to organized the world into categories, break things down into discreet areas and indigenous philosophy really having to do with observing relationships and processes that humans are just in the middle of and living in the world so its more relational oriented.

I have noticed a trend, at least in academia, towards interdisciplinary studies where boundaries between disciplines might be blurred in favor of learning something outside your area of expertise. In that regard, I don’t know if this is a temporary trend or if this is a slow cycle, a long slow cycle back to some of the indigenous thinking that’s guided humans for so long on the planet. I just wondered if you had any thoughts on that or if you see that trend as hopeful or if you notice it yourself?

Steve: Several things come to mind. I think that when you look at what we humans are doing to the planet, whether it’s poisoning the air or poisoning the water, clear cutting the forest or driving species of animals into extinction, it’s obvious that we have to change and we have to look at nature in a different way.

I think part of it goes back to – and this is one of the things that certainly Dan talked about in that lecture that you heard – the idea that where you see yourself in comparison with the rest of the natural world.

People like to say, for example, when talking about Indians, they sort of talk about Indians in almost in a romantic sort of way, they say that Indians worship nature, that they love nature, are close to nature or something like that. But in reality the best way to look at it that Indians were a part of the natural world. They were an intrigral and intimate part of the natural world and it was all about relationships.

Ecology is a relatively new field for western society, but native people have been ecologists since the beginning of time, and that idea of having a relationship with the natural world, it has to be a relationship where you not only take, which we as western people are very good at doing, but it has to be a relationship in which we give back as well.

Native American relationship with the rest of the earth was reciprocal. You played a part in it. You perhaps hunted a deer. You took a deer’s life for food, but at the same time you offered the right prayers and the right ceremonies.

One of the things you talked about a moment ago in the case of Indonesia, there were times when tribes would go into the mountains and just pray for the well being of that mountain, the health and well being of that mountain and all the animals that were there. There was – and I think of the Lakota in the Black hills. They set aside the month of June as a time when they took care of the mountain. They helped the mountain heal and we don’t look at things that way. We just continue to take.

Our relationship to the natural world is not an appropriate relationship in that respect and whereas the native relationship to the natural world was appropriate. It was reciprocal, it was appropriate, and you have to do those things

Julie: And I wonder if we’ll get back to that, maybe by dire consequence because we have to or – I’ll be curious to know because I am a glass half full person, what will be the markers in our path that will lead us back to that place of reverence and respect and reciprocity. Surely your work as an educator is one of those markers and other colleagues of yours and folks at the Mountain Lion Foundation being another one. So thank you for the work you do, Steve, and thank you for the interview today.

Steve: Well, thank you very much. I enjoyed it.

Julie: Yes, all right. Take care.

Closing: [music] This has been a Mountain Lion Foundation On Air broadcast. On Air is a copyrighted production of the Mountain Lion Foundation. Permission to rebroadcast is granted for noncommercial use.

MORE ABOUT STEVE PAVLIK

Steve Pavlik teaches Native American studies and Native science at Northwest Indian College in Bellingham, Washington and has over thirty years of experience in American Indian education. His areas of academic specialization include Native American religion and spirituality, ethnozoology, cognitive ethology, and environmental ethics. He has published over sixty articles, essays, and reviews, including chapters in anthologies on mountain lions and on Mexican wolves. He has also lectured and presented extensively in the field of Native American studies.

Mr. Pavlik is a naturalist and activist who has volunteered with numerous environmental organizations including Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club, and the Sky Island Alliance. His special interest is large carnivore conservation, and he has been especially active in campaigning for the reform of wildlife management policy as it relates to carnivores. For more background information about Steve Pavlik, visit his Ghost Bear Blog: a website dedicated to indigenous views of the natural world.

ON AIR: Kim Vacariu on Conserving Continental Corridors

11/25/10 An Audio Interview with Julie West, MLF Broadcaster

In this edition of our audio podcast ON AIR, Kim Vacariu, Western Director for the Wildlands Network, reveals how the Network connects experts and local land owners to protect massive corridors of land, spanning the entire North American continent. They discuss the importance of maintaining habitat connectivity for keystone species like the mountain lion, which prevents trophic cascades of extinction.

Listen Now!

Listen to the interview from MLF’s ON AIR program, podcasting research and policy discussions about the issues that face the American lion.

Transcript of Interview

Intro: [music] Welcome to On Air with the Mountain Lion Foundation, broadcasting research and policy discussions to understand the issues that face the American lion.

Julie: Hello, I’m Julie West. Today’s guest is Kim Vacariu. Kim is the western director for Wildlands Network, an international conservation group working to establish a system of connected wildlands across North America. Kim is currently working with a broad range of conversation groups, state and federal agencies, and other stake holders, to protect and connect wildlife corridors along the 5,000 mile Western Wildway that stretches from Alaska to Northern Mexico. Kim works from the Wildlands Network’s field office in Portal Arizona. Welcome, Kim.

Kim: Well, thank you.

Julie: Now, I know that there are actually four continental Wildways slated for protection that comprise this project. So I thought you could briefly speak to each, so we have a sense of scope and better know the purpose of wildlands.

Kim: Sure, well you’re right there are four, and I guess if we look at the continent of North America from space you can kind of picture that maybe across the Northern areas of Canada, the boreal forest areas we have one wildway that stretches from the West to the East across those boreal forest and ends up in the Maritimes of Eastern Canada.

Another, then starting from the western coast of the U.S., we have what we call the Pacific Wildway. And that stretches from Alaska to Baja, pretty much along the West Coast.

The third wildway is the one that I’m actually involved with quite a bit. And that’s the Western Wildway. It stretches from the Brooks range in northern Alaska all the way south along the Rocky Mountain range and associated mountain regions all the way to the Sierra Madre Occidental in northern Mexico. And as you mentioned, that’s about 5000 miles.

And finally we have an Eastern Wildway, which again stretches from the Maritimes of Canada in the Northeast, all the way along the Appalachian Mountain chain and southeastern coastal plains through Florida, to the tip of Florida. So those are pretty massive and vast landscape areas that we hope to, over a fair amount of time, begin to protect and connect.

Julie: Right. Quite a project! Tell me how you begin to identify which areas should comprise the various zones.

Kim: Well we, I’ll speak to the Western Wildway since that’s the one that we’ve actually made the most progress on and completed some work on. But essentially, what we’ve done is look at the landscape from the thirty-thousand-foot level. And then break that down into what we call wildlands network designs, which are essentially conservation plans that cover regions within those broader wildways. For example, in my area, which is southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico, we have created what we call the Sky Island Wildlands Network Design.

Of course, that’s named after the mountainous region that encompasses this area. And we then begin to work with partners on a very high level to determine what types of planning has already occurred within the regions that we’re most interested in. And in fact it’s our partners who really give us the real foundation for beginning these mapping processes.

For example, wolves and bears would be two good examples of wide-ranging species that we focus on, and clearly the idea behind that being keystone species. These are the ones that if we protect their habitats and their movement pathways, we’re relatively assured of being able to protect habitat for multiple numbers of other species.

Julie: Okay. So, genetic diversification of a species is one important outcome. I know that. When you increase the range, you increase the territory. They can better mate. They can better roam. So is this an example of how the mountain lions, for example, can potentially benefit from this project?

Kim: It absolutely is. Mountain lions, of course, fit that category: keystone species. And even though we wouldn’t expect an individual mountain lion, say, to range all the way from Alaska to Mexico, we do know that they range hundreds of miles. And so the idea behind overlapping conservation regional plans would be to allow those mountain lions’ ranges or habitat areas for specific animals to overlap with one another. So that an animal, say, in the Sky Islands region would ultimately have a way to interact and mate with an animal from a more northerly region.

Julie: Right.

Kim: And therefore, genetic viability is increased.

Julie: Well, let’s back up. You were talking about partners. It seems like your partners are both scientists and conservationists. And people actually, as you say, are working to identify these core areas that should be protected. And they bring that reasoning with them. But then, the second group of partners really does seem like whoever’s on the ground, who are the ranchers, who are the private homeowners. How do you get those people on board with a project like this?

Kim: Well, it’s been challenging, quite frankly. And the reason it has been challenging is because we are talking very large landscapes. And Wildlands Network has essentially pioneered this concept of looking on a continental scale at conservation. And so we are learning, of course, as we go along. And when we want to involve tribal land owners in particular who are critical to making these plans viable and at the same token we also have other land managers that are very important to us. Maybe we can get to those later. Those would be the public managers.

But as far as private landowners, we work very closely with land trusts to make sure that private land owners have the information they need to make decisions when they are considering development of their properties. As you know, ranching is not a very high profit industry at this time. And economic pressures, especially now, are really coming down on ranchers to be able to figure out ways to continue on the land without completely selling off their homestead.

And so we do things like create conservation planning workshops for private landowners, in which we bring in land trusts and other, actually other federal agencies that offer dollars to private landowners to conserve their properties. Which ultimately results in cash-in-hand for them, and hopefully would help them to stay on the land and to refrain from development.

Julie: Okay. So, some cash incentive but also the incentive to keep their land out of the hands of developers and have it be the land they love that’s free and undeveloped, where maybe cattle can range. How do you convince them that, aside from the cash incentive, that… how do you get them to be carnivore friendly, I guess, is the phrase I’m looking for?

Kim: Right. Well, that’s the big, that’s the big challenge. And we’ve actually found that we’re having success in that area, recently. And in fact, we’ve really noted that many very large landowners are actually interested in conservation. There’s so much more information available these days to land managers regarding the effects of having native predators on their property versus eliminating those predators.

And I’ll just give you one quick example. In Colorado, we are working with a very large ranch owner who noticed that many of his aspen trees were in decline. And one of the income sources on his ranch is eco-tourism, and also hunting. And he wanted to make sure that the people that visit his ranch have a very positive visual experience of the Colorado Rockies etcetera. So he set out to try to determine why the aspens were in decline. And a current study is under way there that Wildlands Network is helping to fund, that will set sort of a long-term biological assessment of the land to see whether or not the populations of elk on that property are, in fact, impacting the aspen decline.

Julie: Like in Yellowstone?

Kim: Exactly in Yellowstone. And of course there are no wolves, for example, in that area at this time. Although there is some evidence that there may be a few naturally recolonizing there. So that adds a little bit more interest to the project. And so that’s an example of a rancher who’s actually looking at the science of conservation biology to improve his income potential.

Julie: Because the wolves come in, they are preying on elk who can’t lollygag about the eating, haha, eating the young aspens. And so the aspens and other riparian plants have a better shot of growing because the wolf is now keeping that in check. Is that how it works?

Kim: That would be how it would work. And you know, there are varying levels of that. There are many studies that have occurred in Yellowstone that have actually pointed to the fact that in the presence of wolves, obviously, keeps elk moving.

Julie: Right.

Kim: And therefore, keeps them, essentially, out of the riparian areas. And therefore allowing saplings to develop that haven’t been developing there due to over-browsing by elk.

Julie: Mm-hm. And is there a similar anecdote you could share related to mountain lions?

Kim: I’m not so certain that I have an exact anecdote for mountain lions. Although clearly, mountain lion prey is similar to that of wolves. And one would assume that the same types of ecological effects could be associated with the presence of mountain lions.

Julie: Mm-hm. And it does seem that you’re not only encouraging, yes, by encouraging the predators and particular wildlife to occupy land you’re encouraging certain kind of plant to thrive. And it seems that there’s a whole cascade effect.

Kim: No question about that. In fact, these trophic cascades as they’re called, are really becoming a centerpiece to the science of conservation. Well they have been a centerpiece to the science of conservation biology.

And you know, it all really started with the work that was done in Yellowstone which to just follow through with that cascade — when wolves were removed elk populations exploded — as we said. And they began to browse all the new seedlings and saplings that were growing in riparian areas.

And the next step in that cascade was that beavers were reduced in numbers, so therefore there was less beaver damming activity. And, due to less beaver damming activity, there was less fish population. And as you can see, that goes on and on. And, of course bird populations and many other types of species were of ultimately affected by that.

Julie: So, some of these workshops you offer to the ranchers again, getting back to them, get into this kind of detail and help them see how they’re contributing to the health of an ecosystem?

Kim: Absolutely yes. That’s one of the main goals of this. Because in order to encourage a private land owner to take actions like these to protect land, they clearly have to have some basis for doing so. And ultimately when you can connect these actions back to increase income, that’s when you begin to develop an audience. And that is slowly happening. And we’re real excited about that. And we expect that we’re gonna be able to move that trend forward in the next uh, short amount of time.

Julie: Okay. And then, I’m just wanting a better sense of how it works. I’m sure you’re working with GPS, you mentioned that, and sophisticated maps. But also scientists. So, someone might note, oh here’s a five mile corridor in this wetlands area that’s really key for, you know, the survival of these certain keystone species, but it’s currently being occupied by X, Y, and Z families. Then do you have someone who will literally approach those families if they’re not already being involved in these workshops or how do you get them?

Kim: Yeah, in some cases that’s the way it works. Typically, it’s a long-term process. And, just like anything else where you’re trying to attempt to create change.

Julie: Mm-hm.

Kim: You’ve got to move slowly. And, you’ve got to make the appropriate opportunities for this to occur.

Julie: Right. Right.

Kim: And that’s one of the reasons that we create these private landowner workshops, so that multiple private landowners can attend at the same time. And therefore they feel the safety of being with their neighbors and with the understanding of the problems that they’re all facing and it makes the concept of a multiple attended workshop a little better.

Julie: Right, right. And that they’re all stewards, or they can help in this greater stewarding project.

Kim: Yes. Another important aspect of that is making sure that the messengers are correct. In many of these cases we will invite a rancher who we know has already committed to conservation to lead some of the discussions in these private landowner workshops. So that also helps to create a sense of ease amongst participants.

Julie: That’s a great idea. So what are some of the core issues at stake for your area, Kim? Are there any…

Kim: Well, we of course are right on the US-Mexico border. And it, I’m sure that all you have to do is pay attention to one or two days worth of news before you actually begin to realize that the security infrastructure that’s being implemented along the border may have some purposes that it achieves regarding immigration. But at the same time, there’s a very large impact on wildlife corridors that cross the border.

Julie: Sure.

Kim: And, so that’s one of the big issues that we’re facing: how to elevate the concept that we need to have some ecological concern regarding these infrastructure projects, as well as security concerns.

Julie: Is it possible to infiltrate some of those other discussions so that they’re on the table while the other issues are being considered?

Kim: Well, it is. And we’ve over the past ah, about three years, we’ve conducted a number of symposiums that include private landowners and public land managers and the border patrol and Department of Homeland Security Officials. Symposiums at which they are exposed to the impacts on wildlife and on just flora and fauna in general.

Julie: Right.

Kim: –By the work that they’re doing. So, we’ve made some inroads in causing some concern to be taken on the part of these agencies in their planning efforts.

Julie: So what would one practical suggestion be when you’re looking at twelve-foot-high or, I don’t even know how high, fences and other obstacles?

Kim: Right. Well, the first step is to identify where the wildlife corridors are, of course. And we’ve done that to some extent. And we’re working to perfect that, so that we know exactly where these wildlife corridors exist. And once we know that, we can then point to the areas and make suggestions about different types of infrastructure that might be more wildlife-friendly. Certain types of fencing, for example, will keep vehicles out but wildlife can pass through them. Now, of course those are only in areas where walls have not been built today.

Frankly there’s about 800 miles of US-Mexico border that has been solidly barricaded with walls. And some of those walls cross important wildlife corridors. And so therefore we are a little bit in the, a little bit behind schedule in protecting those areas. But, we are attempting to point out where these wildlife corridors are located as we go forward.

Julie: And not limiting this challenge to the border lands, but looking at the challenge of, for example, roads and other parts of the country. How are you helping to facilitate wildlife crossing with bridges or other kinds of easements, when it comes to highways and that infrastructure?

Kim: Sure, that’s probably the second most important concern that we have. Because regardless of how much land is conserved on either side of a highway, the fact that the highway bisects those lands really creates the fragmentation that we’re trying to avoid. And, to address that, we’ve, we’ve worked with local partners. For example, south, east of Albuquerque, New Mexico, where U.S. 40 crosses between two major mountain ranges there.

Julie: Mm-hm.

Kim: We have developed a coalition that worked with the highway department to include wildlife friendly crossing structures as part of a regularly scheduled maintenance program. And the result of that particular project has been tremendous and impressive. It has reduced, say well as a matter of fact mountain lions are one of the species that were being killed fairly regularly on that stretch of highway.

Julie: Yes. Yeah.

Kim: And through that work we’ve essentially reduced it to almost zero.

Julie: Oh, fantastic!

Kim: And there’s a multiple number of different approaches that were taken by the highway department to help that to happen.

Julie: Like culverts? Or? I’m trying to visualize what that might look like.

Kim: Well, in that particular project there were two or three overpasses, highway overpasses over streams and other arroyos, which had become completely clogged with underbrush. And so part of the project was to remove the underbrush and create, and reopen those wildlife passages. Another thing that was attempted and actually has been quite successful was fencing the highways on both sides in certain areas, and then funneling, with the fencing, wildlife into these underpasses.

Julie: Okay.

Kim: And so that has also been successful.

Julie: And does everybody tithe something to pay for those initiatives? Or how does that part work, the financing, or I guess that might just depend on the situation.

Kim: Well, it does depend on the situation. But in the case of an already existing maintenance project that’s going to cost millions of dollars, making these adjustments for wildlife may not represent that many extra dollars. So, in some cases there may not be any fundraising that’s required. And in other cases of coarse, the highway departments need to be lobbied and brought on board if there’s a large expense.

Now another example is in Colorado at West Vail Pass on Interstate 70. And as you know, Interstate 70 bisects roadless areas in many places. And so that’s been another area of focus, and our partners in Colorado — Colorado Safe Passage Coalition — has been working with the state government and the Department of Transportation there to assist them in getting a large federal grant toward building an actual overpass — a wildlife bridge as we call them — at West Vail Pass. And that is now in the planning stages and as a matter of fact there’s been a national contest for designers to submit various designs for this wildlife bridge and that’s still in process, but we expect there will be, in the next few years, a major wildlife bridge at West Vail Pass.

Kim: Well, we think it will be because we’ve already seen success with wildlife bridges in Canada. And so we expect that if we follow that same principle — in other words, making sure the bridge is wide enough and it’s bermed on the edges so that wildlife using it can’t look over and see traffic below–

Julie: Right.

Kim: –and land, it is landscaped to match the surrounding landscape — that these bridges do work.

Julie: It must be exciting to share stories with your colleagues in some of the other Wildways areas. And do you ever share researchers or conservationists or swap, surely you swap tips on how to go about undertaking a certain task?

Kim: You bet! That’s really where part of the name network enters into our organizational because we essentially exist to promote networks across the landscape, and in this case across North America, as you state. We have, well, first of all, we have Wildlands Network staff in several places around the country, some of which is in Florida, where the Florida Panther is a real focal species.

And in fact, highway passages are being constructed in Florida to accommodate the panther there. We have worked with numerous groups there and elsewhere to share this information. And, in fact, a lot of the information that we develop we make public and our goal is to get it to our partners so that they can use it.

Julie: Well, we’re about of time but I did want to say that people can get good information by visiting your website. Please tell that address.

Kim: Okay. That would be Wildlandsnetwork.org.

Julie: Great. And I have been to your network and I’ve looked at some of the maps that show the swath of land and the various areas. And what that might look like if you are successful in making that happen. Is it possible to kind of connect the dots for us now and tell us what if we were to look at your particular image, would some of the image be filled in? Are you making headway in one part of the project zone versus another?

Kim: Well, we are, first of all, the Western Wildway. As I mentioned, that was really the original project that we launched upon. And there are multiple examples throughout that wildway of lands that have been protected and connected through the use of multiple tools, mostly relating to land management on the parts of private land owners and public land managers, like the agencies. And many of those stories are told on our website, so you might be able to check those out there. But piece by piece we’re putting this together. And as you might imagine, this is not a ten year project.

Julie: Right.

Kim: This is not a twenty year project. This could be a 100 year project, and we want to be able to hand this off to future generations. But we want to make sure that we set the foundation to get the whole thing rolling.

Julie: Yes. Well I applaud you for being a part of this very important effort Ken, Kim, excuse me, and thank you for spending time with us today. Are there any other areas we might not have touched on or any parting thoughts before we say good-bye?

Kim: Well, sure. Just one quick thing, and that is that the interaction that we talked about amongst keystone species and landscapes is very key to the actual direction that we need to go here. And trophic cascades is how we refer to that interaction. And there are some brand-new materials in fact, published recently by Island Press. In fact, the name of this book I’m looking at here is Trophic Cascades, edited by John Terborgh and James Estes. And it probably is the finest work yet available on describing these interactions and the importance they have for landscape. So I would recommend to your listeners that they might check that out.

Julie: Right. And our politicians too?!

Kim: Absolutely. [laugh]

Julie: [laugh] Most importantly!

Kim: Yeah.

Julie: Well, very good. I appreciate the plug. And very nice speaking with you today, Kim. Thank you so much.

Kim: My pleasure, Julie. Thank you.

Julie: All right. Bye-bye. Closing: [music] This has been a Mountain Lion Foundation On Air broadcast. On Air is a copyrighted production of the Mountain Lion Foundation. Permission to rebroadcast is granted for noncommercial use. For more information visit mountainlion.org

Closing: [music] This has been a Mountain Lion Foundation On Air broadcast. On Air is a copyrighted production of the Mountain Lion Foundation. Permission to rebroadcast is granted for noncommercial use.

MORE ABOUT KIM VACARIU

Kim Vacariu is the Western Director for the Wildlands Network. He currently works with a broad range of local, state, and federal agencies, conservation groups, elected officials and private citizens to implement Wildlands Network Conservation Plans in the western U.S.

Kim currently coordinates the Western Wildway Network Initiative — a collaborative strategy to protect wildlife corridors along the Western Wildway stretching from Alaska south to Mexico. Kim also has been instrumental in elevating the recognition of ecological concerns related to the construction of border security infrastructure blocking US-Mexico wildlife linkages, and has organized and convenes influential “Border Ecological Symposiums” designed to halt that work. He has authored numerous articles and papers devoted to raising awareness of the importance of large-scale landscape connectivity, and has presented at many national conferences. Kim was co-author in 2000 of the Sky Islands Wildlands Network Design — the first of six “WNDs” published to date by the Wildlands Network. He previously served as Wildlands Network’s Communications Director from 1998-2000.

Kim has a BS in Journalism from Kent State University, and was the founder, editor, and publisher of the Steamboat Springs Review (Colorado), a conservation-focused newspaper, and received that city’s “Shining Star Award” for community environmental service in 1996. Kim works from the Wildlands Network’s Portal, Arizona field office.

Naidu is a member of the IUCN Species Survival Commission Cat Specialist Group and the Wild Felid Research & Management Association.

MORE ABOUT THE WILDLANDS NETWORK

Wildlands Network is urgently restoring, protecting and connecting the best wild places throughout North America because people need nature, and nature needs space to survive. By connecting our biggest parks and healthiest conservation lands, the Network has created Wildways , landscapes large enough to sustain wildlife for the long-term.

ON AIR: Geneticist Ashwin Naidu Uses Forensics to Study Predator and Prey Interaction

An Audio Interview with Craig Fergus, MLF Volunteer

In this edition of our audio podcast ON AIR, volunteer Craig Fergus interviews geneticist Ashwin Naidu about his work studying mountain lions and their diet in southwestern Arizona via non-invasive genetic techniques. His recent work focuses on modeling potential wildlife corridors via computers and ground evidence in Arizona’s Kofa National Wildlife Refuge.

Listen Now!

Listen to the interview from MLF’s ON AIR program, podcasting research and policy discussions about the issues that face the American lion.

It’s a messy job. Ashwin specializes in extracting DNA from scat — fecal samples — and he has discovered a great deal about the size and behavior of mountain lions in this region. Lions have been blamed for declines in bighorn sheep populations in Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, and management officials are considering proposals to completely wipe out predator populations. Now more than ever, Ashwin’s research is critical in helping us better understand the species and promote ecological conservation.

Transcript of Interview

Craig: Hello, Ashwin. Welcome to On the Air, and thank you for taking the time to talk to us today.

Ashwin: Thank you, Craig. I’m really excited about this program you have initiated and thank you, Amy, for bringing me in touch with Craig with the Mountain Lion Foundation, for interviewing me about my research and projects as they relate to mountain lion management in Arizona.

Craig: No Problem. So as you mentioned earlier you’re involved in some mountain lion projects down in Arizona. Why don’t you give us a run-down of the work you’re currently involved in.

Ashwin: Yes, most certainly. I am originally – I was in India, and I’m from India. I got in touch with Dr. Melanie Culver from the University of Arizona at a conference in Oxford about felid biology and conservation. Melanie put me in touch with a project on trying to document mountain lion populations and studying their diet in southwestern Arizona, particularly to identify presence of mountain lions in the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge and extending to the mountain ranges that surround Kofa National Wildlife Refuge in southwest Arizona.

My expertise lies primarily in the use of genetics for wildlife conservation, conservation genetics and wildlife forensics, particularly dealing with DNA. So when I was put in touch with this project with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service, my objectives were to document the minimum number of mountain lions in Kofa National Wildlife Refuge and surrounding areas and what their diet profiles were.

The project was initiated due to concern that was floating among managers and scientists in the area as it related to bighorn sheep populations. Desert bighorn sheep populations declined by fifty percent in the area over the last ten years, 2002 to 2008.

There are many reasons why Fish and Wildlife Service and Arizona Game and Fish began taking interest into investigating mountain lions in this area because a decline of such a great extent was probably due to predation by mountain lions. It was also speculated and is still under the process of investigation, trying to identify the causes of that decline, particularly related with habitat; whether it was water, drought, or was it due to hunting or disease. There are several factors that both the Arizona Game and Fish Department and the Fish and Wildlife Service were interested in to investigate the decline in bighorn sheep. Since predation is a primary concern.

When I came in touch with the project and began working on it, my immediate objectives were to find out how many mountain lions were occurring on the refuge and what they were eating. I figured that non-invasive genetics, particularly collection of mountain lion scats, could bring me close to these answers, these preliminary investigative questions, as they related to predation by mountain lions.

Craig: That’s great coverage on how you’ve come to work on this. How about you tell us more about using scat as a way of detecting mountain lions and how you can use that information to both look at how many there are and what they’ve been eating.

Ashwin: Yes. Non-invasive genetics, particularly the use of fecal samples to document population size and diet, has become very popular in the recent past because of improvements in genetic techniques on obtaining DNA from fecal samples and the analysis and identification of species, sex, individuals, and diet.

How I went about this was to collect scat in the first place from the refuge in the surrounding mountain ranges in southwestern Arizona. What I did was I extracted DNA from the scats that were collected and identified species.

The first step was to identify were they mountain lion scats or not and bobcat scats or not. Then we extracted DNA and identified the species from the scat. This DNA was obtained from the surface of the scat. When a scat or fecal sample is deposited, particularly when dealing with large carnivores, you would expect to obtain DNA from the predator or the carnivore that deposited the scat from the surface of the scat.

We extract the DNA and identified the species from the surface of the scat, the DNA from the surface, and that told us, “Ok, these feces samples belong to mountain lions.” We also identified some other species like bobcats and coyotes. But, morphologically, when you identify scats in the field sometimes you’re not sure what animal species it is, but then when you actually extract DNA, and you sequence the DNA, you are sure about the species identity.

Once we identify the species, each species will then be analyzed separately. If I had a bunch of mountain lion scats, I would go ahead and open up those mountain lion scats and pull out bone fragments or specific tissue remains from prey species that the mountain lion ate.

The same technique of this species identification that I applied to identify the scat, I would apply to identify the prey remains that are found from the scats. Once we get DNA from the prey remains that are found in the scat, we would identify the species of what prey remains are present — prey species are present — as part of mountain lion diet. So when you collect a lot of samples in a certain area and you repeat these techniques — this technique of species identification on scats from a large area — then you have a good sample size.

When I documented prey, I was able to generate a diet profile for the mountain lions in the area. Most of mountain lion diet that I documented was comprised of mule deer and bighorn sheep. A good percentage, about 30 percent, was composed of smaller prey items like the American badger, grey fox, and also domestic sheep, which is both fascinating and bothersome and lead to further questions about what these lions are eating on the refuge. That is the procedure on how we identify their diet and how we identify species.

Once we have that, we were also interested in the questions like I mentioned earlier; of estimating population size, how many individuals there are, and what are their sex. I use the same techniques that exist for other large carnivores, particularly wild felids to document the number of individuals.

What I did was a technique that we all know called DNA finger printing. We use these short repeats on DNA sequences called micro-satellite markers to generate unique genotypes or DNA fingerprints for each of these individuals.

Since each individual has its own unique genetic profile, we would know how many individuals there are. If from two different scats that we collected separately at different times, we get the same profile, we would know that it is the same individual. That way we would compare the number of unique genotypes to the number of scats collected. Over time we would come up with an estimate of the minimum number of individuals that are in a given area where we sampled. One other thing is the technique of sex identification. Once you identify individuals, we were interested in knowing, “Ok, what are the sexes of these individual lions?” We used another technique that was designed particularly for felids and felid sex identification, and to our surprise it did work really well on identifying sexes of these individuals.

We could identify from the minimum number of eleven individuals that I identified in this area, we could identify sexes of nine individuals. We found six males and three females. This sex identification assay is based on the X and the Y chromosomes. If it was a female, we would get an amplification only for the X chromosome and from our assay or genetic technique we would know that it is a female. And if it was a male, we would know that it was a male because we would get two amplifications, one for the X and one for the Y, and we would know that it’s a male. On that basis we can distinguish between males and females from scats in the given area.

So just to summarize, in my project I documented the minimum number of lions, what their sexes are, and also their diet. And not just mountain lions, but also bobcats.

Craig: Fantastic. That’s really interesting. A lot of different methods that could potentially be used for mountain lion research. Now, what do you think are the main things that we could pull from this data and how can they be pushed into management applications?

Ashwin: Sure. When referring to this particular area I’m working in, previously there was little or no information about mountain lions in the area. Mountain lions were considered transient, and the first mountain lion was documented in 2003 only after the last record in 1944 of a hunter killed mountain lion in Kofa.

Once U.S. Fish and Wildlife service and [Arizona] Game and Fish started documenting mountain lions, they took up a project, a camera-trapping project, and placed cameras throughout Kofa National Wildlife Refuge. One of my co-authors, and also the person who wrote the grant for my project, Lindsey Smythe, documented five different mountain lions in the area.

Mountain lions are difficult to identify using camera traps because, unlike other cat species or wild felid species, they have very few markings on their bodies that we can use to distinguish between individuals.

The Fish and Wildlife Service and State Game and Fish Department wanted to go a step further and try to use other techniques to append to their current investigative techniques, and genetics was their next best thought. Once we used genetics, we found so much more – we learned so much more about the mountain lions in this area.

Not only did we find eleven individuals in the Kofa, we also found two more individuals in the surrounding mountain ranges over the last three years of scat collection. We also complimented the diet data, and we now know that mountain lions, what their diet profile is in this area and what they’re eating.

Although we did not come up with a conclusive predation rate of mountain lions on bighorn sheep and mule deer in the area, we now know some information about their diet and how we can proceed now with the available techniques at hand; camera trapping, GPS, radio collaring, non-invasive scat genetics, and aerial surveys of prey species. When we put all of these together, our hope is that we can come up with what has been the causal factor for the decline in bighorn sheep.

When we map all of this information on a timeline, we would be able better to predict what might happen in the future with this population and how mountain lions are moving across the landscape as they were previously not studied. We do not know much information about that and now we know so much more. So although nothing is very conclusive at this point, I’d like to say that it did help us better ground management decisions in the area.

Craig: So that leads right into my next question. What’s next for you, what’s next for the project and what research can we expect to see in the near future?

Ashwin: Yes, I’m very exited with the new research, particularly from the genetics aspect because we are moving toward trying to understand the landscape genetics of mountain lions in the area.

We recently had a new student working in the lab on developing a single nucleotide polymorphism chip, what we call a SNiP chip, for mountain lions. What we can do with this SNiP chip is it allows us to look at a genome wide. When you look at mountain lion genetics, and you do relatedness analysis, previously we were looking at only certain parts of the genome. Now we will be able to look at it at a higher resolution.

What we would like to answer in the first stage of questions: if mountain lions were not in this area before but they were only transients and now they’re showing signs of residency, we’d like to know where these mountain lions are coming from. And, also be able to see if mountain lions are adapting.

So once we have this SNiP chip available, we’ll be able to look at certain locations on the genome that are locations that tell us about adaptation, and there are certain locations on the genome that tell us about what are neutral, and we could use those for relatedness estimates.

If you map relatedness of mountain lions across a landscape, we could predict or we could visualize what is the gene flow among mountain lions across the landscape. When we combine GIS tools with this genetic data, we could be able to predict mountain lion movements across the landscape.

One of the questions that I wish to answer during my Ph.D. dissertation is at this small scale and large scale, what is the general movement pattern of mountain lions? We would be able to predict that using genetics.

The small scale I’m talking about, southwest Arizona, where more regionally the Fish and Wildlife Service Management agencies and Arizona Game and Fish would like to know where the mountain lions from Kofa came in from. At the larger scale from a research standpoint we would like to understand, if mountain lions did re-colonize North America, which routes did they take to re-colonize?

This will all be dependant upon collaborations from several different agencies and individuals interested in mountain lion research region wide. Maybe in the future, given the GIS tools, we could come up with predictive models on mountain lion movements and habitat-based models that would tell us which landscapes mountain lions would colonize next. So that is very exiting to us.

Craig: Those all sound like really exciting conclusions to be found if that work goes well. What would be the best way to keep up with your research? Is there a website people can follow you at?

Ashwin: Sure. I have the Cat Specialist Group web site that has posted a brief description about my masters project and my Ph.D. dissertation, but that is about my projects with the Arizona Game and Fish, and Fish and Wildlife Service. But I would like to say that once we have this puma SNiP chip, it would be a universal use resource.

As mountain lion researchers make use of genetics more and more, we will be able to come up with databases of mountain lions like we are doing with humans all across the range and also their diets. We would be moving towards understanding predator-prey population dynamics with this data that we will be collecting. Also we will be learning about adaptation of mountain lions.

My hope is that we will be able to predict, given the data that we collect from now on and about ten years from now, about what will be the outcome and the effects of landscape modifications by humans on mountain lion populations at a larger scale which is across North and South America and how it would affect their genetic diversity.

Craig: Well that answers just about all my questions. Is there anything else you wanted to say before we finished up?

Ashwin: I’d like to say that Mountain Lion Foundation is doing a great job with making people aware of not just mountain lions but also their prey and their habitat. When you look at large charismatic carnivore from a top-down approach, you are presenting an umbrella of life to people and how large carnivores can help maintain ecological processes.

There has been a lot of literature published on trophic cascades and how if we focus our efforts on these large carnivores or large predators and species that are on the top of the ecological pyramid, we would be able to look at everything that is operating under this umbrella as one single unit.

I think from a philosophical perspective it is very important to conserve ecological processes as a whole. Studying large predators helps cover a very good percentage of trying to understand these ecological processes. Thank you very much to have taken this initiative, to interview researchers, and to bring everyone together in this new digital age.

Craig: (laugh) Well, we definitely like to do our part. Thank you very much for your support and for coming to talk with us today.

Ashwin: Sure. Thank you very much, Craig. I’d like to say thanks to Amy as well for getting us in touch once again.

Craig: Great! Well, again, thank you very much, and I hope folks keep checking back here for more interviews with fantastic researchers like Ashwin here. Thanks so much for listening.

Ashwin: Thank you, Craig.

Closing: [music] This has been a Mountain Lion Foundation On Air broadcast. On Air is a copyrighted production of the Mountain Lion Foundation. Permission to rebroadcast is granted for noncommercial use.

MORE ABOUT ASHWIN NAIDU

Ashwin Naidu is a wildlife geneticist interested in applying and improving techniques in conservation genetics and wildlife DNA forensics to aid in management and conservation of wild felids. The emphasis of his projects since 2006 has been the use of non-invasive genetic analyses to provide reliable information on presence, minimum numbers, diet assessments and sex of tigers and leopards in south-central India, and mountain lions and bobcats in south-western Arizona. Naidu’s current projects include standardizing genetic identification assays, non-invasive biological specimen collection protocols and his doctoral study on puma relatedness and connectivity across the Sonoran-Mojave desert landscape.

Ashwin Naidu’s doctoral study on puma relatedness and connectivity across the Sonoran-Mojave desert landscape is funded by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Kofa National Wildlife Refuge and the Arizona Game & Fish Department. His doctoral work is in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Arizona.

Naidu is a member of the IUCN Species Survival Commission Cat Specialist Group and the Wild Felid Research & Management Association.