Look, we were shown on the new town sign in Pescadero!
Augusts guest lecturer for the Field Lecture Series was Jena Casey, a locally raised graduate of San Jose State where she earned her Master of Science in Environmental Studies. In 2005 she performed a non-invasive study of Mountain Lions in Big Basin State Park as part of her thesis research.
Jena Casey MS. is currently employed by Cal Poly’s Swanton Pacific Ranch in Davenport where her work in Research & Education supports opportunities for hands-on training to interns and undergraduate students involved in sustainable agriculture and resource management disciplines. She earned her Master of Science in Environmental Studies from San Jose State University in 2008. Her Ranch-based fieldwork is focused on riparian restoration design and implementation, wildlife inventory and monitoring, invasive species management, and support of agriculture research and watershed management throughout the diverse ecosystems found on the Ranch. She has also worked to develop several funding opportunities awarded at the federal, state and local levels to support university-based and public outreach, workshops, trainings and research projects for sustainable agriculture and water quality management at the Ranch.
Jena gave an outstanding talk that encompassed the history of our local mountain lions (known as Puma Concolor); their historic range and the range they are now found in, the causes behind their population and landscape changes, and how mountain lions have been perceived by the public and how that has effected population and health of the lions in California.
Jena also discussed the current research methods used to better understand how mountain lions live, hunt and move around; from her methods she used when conducted her thesis research, using non-invasive sample collecting, to the high tech collars that are used to track the lions every move.
Jena stressed the lions current dilemma in being cut off from vital hunting routes because of urban sprawl in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
On a more public level, Jena went over some practices that residence living in areas that are populated by mountain lions, that can help keep the relationship between human and lion from being dangerous.
If you would like to learn more about Jena and her work, visit: www.spranch.org
For info on UC Santa Cruz’s Mountain Lion research: http://bapp.org/
To report a Mountain Lion sighting: info@felidaefund.org
To listen to Jena’s lecture on Podcast: (note that there is a small chunk of time right in the middle of the lecture that did not get recorded due to technical errors)
Happy Trails!
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