California’s mountain lion faces ‘extinction vortex’
latimes.com
latimes.com
>“Individual lions face horrible deaths from car collisions or rat poison, while their populations become increasingly isolated and inbred in ever-shrinking islands of habitat hemmed by freeways and sprawl.”
Is this it? It doesn't really fit the name that well..
> Mountain lions as a species are not threatened in California, but a petition submitted Tuesday to the state Fish and Game Commission argues that six isolated and genetically distinct cougar clans from Santa Cruz to the U.S.-Mexico border comprise a subpopulation that is threatened by extinction.
I understand it lacks the 'We define extinction vortex as...' preamble, but you can easily infer it.
For "vortex" to actually be fitting I'd expect some kind of circular process: perhaps a feedback loop, wherein some process is causing extinction which increasingly leads to more extinction. Like how melting ice leads to warming, which leads to more melting ice, etc, might be fair to call a "warming vortex".
It might interest you to know that there is an analogy between black holes and vortexes, as the latter are used as physical models of the former: https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys4151#affil-auth
That is indeed what it means. Per Wikipedia: "[The extinction vortex model] shows the events that ultimately lead small populations to become increasingly more vulnerable as they spiral toward extinction."
The article fails to directly define the term, and the indirect definitions do not point to anything that might constitute a “vortex”:
>The article points several times to the increasing isolation of the populations and the threats that giving them protected status would require development to take isolation of population in care when developing.
Which only implies the vortex, or feedback loop, if you already know the term and meaning, but the article does not expect you to know it..!
Isolation alone hardly reads as an evolutionary feedback loop... unless you already know that isolation creates an evolutionary feedback loop
I'm truly tired of this media tactic to create/hijack curiosity (IE "wtf is a 'polar vortex'") and/or scare quotes to generate page views.
It's a boundary below which specific feedback mechanisms accelerate extinction, fragmentation of populations being one condition.
re: stopping development in some areas in California: that sounds like a good idea in general, and in this case I believe that protecting some areas of natural habitat is probably a good idea.
While not awful advice, it's also vastly overblowing the true (nonexistent) danger mountain lions pose.
Mountain lions are one of the smallest threats imaginable to anyone, small children included. 99.99% of people will never ever ever even be fortunate enough to see a mountain lion in the wild.
If you do see a mountain lion up close, it's because either you surprised it (extremely unlikely) or because it wants you to see it (slightly less likely). If you and a kid are being hunted by a mountain lion (unbelievably unlikely) you'll likely never see it until it's too late.
Do not let anyone ever tell you that mountain lions pose any kind of real threat to humans. Mountain lions are responsible for ones of attacks on humans over a period of years, if not decades. It'd be like saying to watch out for the threat of getting hit by lightning while winning the lottery.
I've seen them close up and was not scared for the reasons you mentioned, it wanted to be seen. I had a slightly scarier incident where I was hissed at from thick bushes by a mountain lion that I couldn't see, but I left and the lion did not follow.
It's extremely common in our area for lions to attack and kill small dogs and livestock. For that reason, there aren't many people that appreciate preserving these animals even though there have been no recorded attacks on humans in our area.
Bears used to be common in the area too, but were hunted to extinction hundreds of years ago and the ecosystem adapted and survived.
If lions weren't here there are lots of people who would definitely hunt to keep the population down.
I think people overestimate the danger of lions to people, but also overestimate the environmental impact if they left.
But overall I know many people who have seen lions up close or been followed while hiking and everyone ended up being safe.
I think we have different definitions of survived... The bears certain didn't, and that to me is an extraordinarily terrible environmental impact.
I think there's this notion of taking any predator or apex animal out of an ecosystem can cause it to collapse. But early humans hunted many animals to extinctions, at least regionally, and those ecosystems may have changed, but I don't know of any that became inhospitable or void of life as a result.
I'm sure there was some environmental impact of hunting bears to extinction in Central CA, I'm just not aware of it and haven't heard of anyone proposing that we reintroduce them.
Statistically speaking, attacks from both animals are insanely rare.
For example, there have only been 25 deaths from Mountain Lions in North America since we began recording these in the 1800s.
By comparison, fatal shark attacks are over 6 times more likely to occur with about 1 shark attack in North America per year on average.
So it is interesting that whenever we go hiking in the woods or see a mountain lion cross the street, the news reports it and everyone loses their minds. Dying to a mountain lion is one of the rarest ways to die from a statistical perspective. There are rare diseases that you have never heard of that are more likely to kill you.
Every time we put our toe in the water people fear shark attacks. A rogue swell is more likely to capsize your boat than for you to be attacked by a shark, yet some people live in fear of it.
Also if you have hiked any considerable amount in the Rocky Mountains or Sierra Nevada mountain ranges than you have almost certainly had a Mountain Lion watch you, probably several times. Despite the fact, you have never seen it.
Bears are another one. I have encountered so many bears in the wild that I seriously don't even have a count for it anymore. I have stumbled on them less than 100 feet away from me on several occasions and guess what happens... they look me square in the eyes and then calmly turn around and walk away. Sometimes they run away, but they have no interest in killing me. I have never had one approach me once we became aware of the presence of each other.
I hike and camp A LOT, and I have NEVER seen a mountain lion in the wild, despite living in areas of their prime habitat where we know they live. I have seen virtually every other native large animal species on multiple occasions. But I have never seen a mountain lion in the wild. But I can guarantee you that they have seen me several times. That is what is scary about mountain lions. If you ever did get attacked, it would be over before you knew what was happening.
I have seen mountain lions cross the road twice in Park City, UT now. I have seen them in zoos as well. But just never seen one in the wild. Despite spending enough time to encounter bears on 20+ occasions.
If you're swimming at any beach in Florida (for example) you are likely to be within 20' of a shark at all times. At some points in the year you will be near dozens if not hundreds of sharks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyHUr-2_Ets
I have flown in a Cessna low over very popular beaches and there are so many sharks visible that it gets boring to count them.
I'd never heard the term "mountain lion" until recently (I think I first encountered it in a story by Annie Proulx) though I've known the word "puma" since the 1970s. Apparently they're also known as "cougar" or "catamount". I probably came across the term "cougar" some time this century, and the term "catamount" a few minutes ago.
That seems pretty uncharitable. Would you agree that mass murder is a 'feature and not a bug' of communism?
The fact that you're aware of 'crony capitalism' would otherwise imply that you're aware that the cronyism is not considered a feature.
Granted I still like it there, but the illusion of California being an eco-friendly place was completely shot.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome [2] https://la.curbed.com/maps/oil-los-angeles-drill-sites-offsh...
In general the changes emphasized community involvement and participation in the application and enforcement of policy. But they arguably made this too easy. Take the California Environment Quality Act (CEQA), for example. Under CEQA anyone can challenge a development project regardless of the direct effect on them, and there are effectively no repercussions for abusing this.
San Francisco is a microcosm of the statewide problem. Almost everything the city does, from infrastructure projects to permit approvals, requires "community input", which activists effectively use to drag out deliberations on even minor matters for years. The approval process for the biggest changes in the city, such as the towers downtown and the Mission Bay development projects, began in the 1990s. Notably that was before the two dotcom bubbles and the housing crisis made everybody city planning experts and community activists. Such large scale development would be strangled at birth by activists today even though they're merely replacing dirty industrial sites and adding net housing (as opposed to the pre-1980s projects that literally razed communities and kicked people out onto the streets--e.g. the I-Hotel[1]).
So I think the problem isn't crony capitalism--not generally. I think a better description of this is mob rule reflecting sanctimonious populism. Some companies have become quite adept at staying under the radar--not to avoid the law, but to avoid the attention of activists and communities.[2] But I don't think we should confuse that sort of bureaucratic sophistication with cronyism, graft, rule avoidance, and similar types of behavior. California isn't even remotely comparable to states like New Jersey, Illinois, or Alabama in this regard; California companies are angelic by comparison.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Hotel_(San_Franc...
[2] Political leaders do this too for entirely pure-of-heart reasons. It's little known that the long-term plan for the Great Highway along the west coast of SF is for it to be demolished. Rather than attempting to mitigate coastal erosion along the southern end, they're simply going to close it. They "schemed" with California officials and the Federal government (who controls the beach and, I think, the technically the highway itself) to develop an environmental plan to store the habitat. This nominally comports with the express wishes of California and San Francisco voters. But if people actually caught wind of this everybody would freak out because the Great Highway is now heavily trafficked, especially during commute hours. So AFAICT there's a "conspiracy" by city politicians, environmentalists, and the Feds to formalize and set into the motion the long-term plan before anyone notices to effectively challenge it.
When all you have is a hammer...
It seems like something has to give. In particular, we can't have reasonable housing prices, a healthy mountain lion habitat and increased immigration and population (especially in California). Those three things are directly at odds with each other.
I don't know what the answer is, but it seems likely that mountain lions will end up as the lowest priority.
We can “easily” have all three things you’ve suggested there, but a huge swathe of the public seems to want their personal neck of the Bay Area to be as it was in 1973.
> Arcology, a portmanteau of "architecture" and "ecology", is a field of creating architectural design principles for very densely populated, ecologically low-impact human habitats.
> The term was coined in 1969 by architect Paolo Soleri, who believed that a completed arcology would provide space for a variety of residential, commercial, and agricultural facilities while minimizing individual human environmental impact. These structures have been largely hypothetical, as no arcology, even one envisioned by Soleri himself, has yet been built.
Emphasis added. We know what to do, the question is how do we motivate enough people to do it.