
California’s mountain lion faces ‘extinction vortex’ - pseudolus
https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln-mountain-lions-threatened-southern-california-20190625-story.html
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setr
What the hell is an extinction vortex? The article refuses to define it,
despite scare-quoting the term itself..

>“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..

~~~
uniformlyrandom
Second paragraph defines it:

> 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.

~~~
wycy
But how is "threatened by extinction" an "extinction vortex"?

~~~
SolaceQuantum
When a population is isolated or bottlenecked, there reaches an event horizon
where inbreeding causes too manty defects for the population to survive even
if one were to curb outside predation/killing. 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.

~~~
wycy
That still just sounds like regular extinction to me. "Event horizon" or some
other "cliff" type of nomenclature is fair too in light of the inbreeding
effect of very small populations. But "extinction vortex" sounds like they
wanted to pick a scary sounding word for hype.

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".

~~~
smallnamespace
If you look at the Wikipedia article, the term 'extinction vortex' has been
used since the mid-80s.

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](https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys4151#affil-auth)

------
mark_l_watson
I lived in California my whole life before moving to Arizona about twenty
years ago. I saw a mountain lion in Carlsbad California right before we moved.
It was standing next busy College Avenue waiting for a break in traffic, then
trotted across the street. Now living in the mountains of Central Arizona,
there is more potential for seeing them. We have had tracks under our deck and
very early in the morning I saw one on the street two blocks from our house.
Mountain lions can pose a real threat to small children, so literally, pick up
your kids with you if you see a mountain close by.

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.

~~~
paulcole
> Mountain lions can pose a real threat to small children, so literally, pick
> up your kids with you if you see a mountain close by.

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.

~~~
everdev
I live in CA near Santa Cruz and we have had mountain lions in our backyard.

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.

~~~
komali2
>Bears used to be common in the area too, but were hunted to extinction
hundreds of years ago and the ecosystem adapted and survived.

I think we have different definitions of survived... The bears certain didn't,
and that to me is an extraordinarily terrible environmental impact.

~~~
everdev
By survived, I mean the ecosystem as a whole rebalanced and survived.

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.

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kolbe
Sierra Nevada local here. There are very few events in my life that have been
more emotional than the time I saw a mountain lion dead on the side of I80. I
don't agree with the article's scare tactics, but I'm all for taking some
action. I've always felt that tunneling (or even just covering) the freeways
would be an obvious win for the Sierras. It would not only allow for wildlife
to safely exist, but also would save the cost of snow removal and protect the
freeways from the extreme thaw-freeze cycles and trucks with chains that force
the freeway to be resurfaced every few years.

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bloak
Can any Californian say something about the relative frequency of the various
names for this species?

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.

~~~
hoorayimhelping
I live in LA and grew up in Florida. Mountain lion is almost exclusively said
out here. Back in Florida, it seemed like a mix between cougar and mountain
lion, with some people saying puma. I think I've only heard an Appalachian
Mountain hipster use the term catamount in conversation. I think there's a
college sports team whose nickname is the catamounts.

~~~
js2
Not to be confused with the big Florida cat which is the panther.

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aeturnum
Click bait language aside, this is an interesting question. How much should we
seek to preserve a particular species in a particular place? Is it alright to
wipe out a species in one area _because_ they exist somewhere else? It seems
totally possible we want to do this, though it isn't the way we usually think
about it.

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pmdulaney
Is there a proper blessing for the mountain lion?

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aurora72
My favorite OSX version and my favorite animal. It's an incredibly agile
animal. The animals are taking their toll from the insatible greediness of
wild capitalism.

~~~
Fjolsvith
In California, of all places!

~~~
supergauntlet
California is full of the worst kinds of "crony capitalism" (that is,
regulatory capture, a feature and not a bug of capitalism unfortunately), what
do you mean?

~~~
wahern
I don't think that's an even remotely accurate statement of California. I
think the problem is precisely the opposite--the 1960s and 1970s brought a
raft of political and legal changes in California in _response_ to crony
capitalism. The irony is that in some respects, at least, the cure was worse
than the disease.

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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Hotel_\(San_Francisco\))

[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.

~~~
ak217
Well put. Talk to us about Caltrain DTX and SF Planning's holding of that
project hostage in their quest to demolish the I-280 from Mariposa north.

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malvosenior
> _In addition, large-scale residential and commercial development could be
> prohibited or limited in mountain lion habitats within a region covering
> roughly a third of the state._

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.

~~~
cgriswald
Actually, housing seems to be the lowest priority. No one is building west of
280 (for a number of reasons, including environmental ones). Attempts to build
up instead of expand are thwarted by NIMBYs. They’ll complain about the
streets being filled with parked cars (because 10 people live in a house)
while railing against building large residential apartments in downtown areas
because of “lack of infrastructure.” Infrastructure which they also oppose.

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.

~~~
wahern
Nit pik: there's a _ton_ of development west of I-280. Just look at Google
Maps. You may have in mind the Rancho Corral de Tierra nature preserve
([https://www.nps.gov/goga/rcdt-factsheet.htm](https://www.nps.gov/goga/rcdt-
factsheet.htm)), which abuts I-280 for a long section at the north of the
peninsula. But on the other side of that, especially along the coast, is
significant development. Rancho Corral seems only loosely connected to other
preserves, and in general the entire peninsula has significant development,
just not very dense or obvious from the highway--on Google Maps be sure to
zoom in so you can see the little communities and houses scattered around the
lower-half of the peninsula, which is presumably why all those nature
preserves cannot be merged. So the movement of animals from further south
along the Santa Cruz Mountains is probably relatively restricted. That doesn't
prevent mountain lions from making their way near and even into San Francisco,
but in no way should the situation diminish concern for habit loss.

