Environmental Studies
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Big cats, bigger protections: Santa Cruz County mountain lions now listed as threatened
Few people have tracked that tension more closely than UC Santa Cruz wildlife ecologist Chris Wilmers, who leads the long-running Santa Cruz Puma Project, a partnership between the university and the state. He called the listing “the appropriate thing to do,” emphasizing that it’s a long-overdue course correction for a species becoming gradually boxed in.
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California mountain lions are now considered ‘threatened.’ But only in certain regions
“If we want to maintain mountain lion populations in these coastal regions, then we’ve got some work to do,” said Chris Wilmers, a professor of wildlife ecology at the University of California, Santa Cruz and lead investigator of the Santa Cruz Puma Project.
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What one company’s shift towards data centers says about Imperial County’s lithium industry
Chris Benner, a professor of sociology and environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz, comments on challenges to Imperial County’s emerging lithium industry.
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Protection for California mountain lions could become permanent
Chris Wilmers, a researcher at UC Santa Cruz, was one of the outside experts who reviewed the Center for Biological Diversity proposal and worked with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to provide input on how to improve it.
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‘System in flux’: Scientists reveal what happened when wolves and cougars returned to Yellowstone
“Yellowstone is a fascinating system because it’s got the full complement of large carnivores and migratory ungulates that North America used to have,” Chris Wilmers, a wildlife ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz who was not involved in the new study, told Live Science. “A lot of these species are coming back ––…
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Rare Mountain Lion Standoff in San Francisco Ends Peacefully After a 30-Hour Search
“Males will often travel far out,” says Chris Wilmers, an ecologist at UC Santa Cruz and the lead researcher of the Santa Cruz Puma Project. “They’re essentially trying to find a vacant territory, and the Santa Cruz Mountains are pretty trapped in by development on all sides. They wander, and they keep going, and they…
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Winter Storms Ease Drought in California, for Now
Michael Loik, a professor of environmental studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz, said Californians should continue to live with a conservative mind-set regarding water supply. “Drought is the norm in California,” he said. “The next drought is just around the corner.”
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The Zombees Are Here (And That’s Probably OK)
Stacey Philpott, an ecology professor at UC Santa Cruz, has studied how honeybees and yellow-faced bumblebees interact with A. borealis, and her work suggests that honeybees fall victim to the fly more often in specific environments, like urban gardens.
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Did wolves save Yellowstone’s aspen trees?
“Elk have declined a lot since wolves were reintroduced, but it’s not clear that that’s due to wolves,” said Chris Wilmers, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the author of another recent study that assessed the impacts of large carnivore recovery across North America.
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Ask Lookout: Why has Santa Cruz’s water demand dropped?
The decline stems from both cultural shifts and better fixtures in homes – things like low-flow toilets and high-efficiency washing machines – said Brent Haddad, director of the Center for Integrated Water Research at UC Santa Cruz.
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Have Wolves Saved Yellowstone’s Aspens?
“Most ecologists suspect that wolves and other predators have something to do with the decline of elk,” said Environmental Studies Professor Chris Wilmers. “But how much can be attributed to wolves, how much can be attributed to predators in general, how much is attributed to those other causes hasn’t been worked out yet.”
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Scientists push for greater climate role for Latin America’s overlooked ecosystems
Lead author Scott Winton, an ecologist from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in the U.S., carried out three years of extensive fieldwork to produce the first data-driven map of recently documented and predicted peatlands in Colombia’s Orinoquía and Amazonian regions.