As urbanization has helped its prey, female mountain lions appear to have relocated closer to people as a result. Human-maintained water sources such as swimming pools, decorative ponds, and accompanying vegetation have lured the deer further into civilization, which has helped their own numbers grow. Previous research suggested that the mountain lion's main prey, the mule deer, had been moving into developed areas during the last few years as a result of severe drought. Female mountain lions travel with their kittens, and would want to avoid having them hurt or killed by their very close relatives. The researchers' best guess as to why females would be willing to hunt so near to people - on average, a little less than a mile away - was that they were trying to avoid aggressive males. The UCLA / NPS team used GPS to find sites where mountain lions fed on mule deer.

Females, on the other hand, surprised researchers by hunting much farther from these wooded areas and closer to development. Researchers tracked over 400 kills and found that only two took place in developed areas. They found that male mountain lions tended to choose wooded areas near water for their hunting grounds, and generally avoided human development. The researchers looked at pieces of land in the Santa Monica Mountains and Santa Susana Mountains, bounded on every side by freeways, farms, and urban or suburban communities. A team made up of scientists from UCLA and the National Park Service recently set out to see exactly how they're doing that hunting, given the increased encroachment of humans. In the mountains surrounding the metropolis, mountain lions - the last large carnivore in southern California - live, hunt, and try to repopulate. Los Angeles is the second largest metropolitan area in the US, but it's retained some of its natural wild side.

Mountain lion hunt