Bobcat Who Survived California Wildfire Now Mom to 4 Kittens [View all]

[Bayard]

The devastating Woolsey wildfire in Southern California last fall burned nearly 100,000 acres, destroying most of the habitat of the bobcats, mountain lions and other wildlife that live in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. Almost 90 percent of the acreage in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area (SMMNRA), a unit of the National Park Service, burned during the fire, the most damage it’s endured in recorded history.

Amazingly, 12 of 13 mountain lions that SMMNRA biologists had tagged survived the fire, but burn injuries apparently later led to the death of P-64, a mountain lion who’d gained fame by successfully crossing busy Los Angeles area freeways at least 40 times.

Much more fortunate than P-64 is a female bobcat known as B-362. In eerie timing, biologists in Thousand Oaks tagged her just one day before the Woolsey fire started on Nov. 8, 2018. B-362 not only managed to survive the wildfire that obliterated her habitat, but she was able to find a new home not far away in Westlake Village—in a rather unlikely place, however.

Using very-high-frequency radio telemetry and GPS information from B-362?s collar, SMMNRA biologists were able to locate the bobcat earlier this month, deep in the vegetation of a large residential backyard. B-362 wasn’t alone there. She had recently given birth to a healthy litter of four kittens.

“She chose a den in thick brush where she could keep her kittens safe,” Joanne Moriarty, a biologist who hass studied bobcats in SMMNRA for over 15 years, said in a news release.

https://www.care2.com/causes/bobcat-who-survived-california-wildfire-now-mom-to-4-kittens.html

One bright spot in so much tragedy. Much more squee at link.