With the Simi Hills now destined to be open space, rocket engine testing is over and industrial toxins will be cleared out. That’s good news for the kittens born there this spring and the other 50 or so mountain lions known to live in the Los Angeles urban-wildland habitat.
The four female kittens were born about five weeks ago to mama P-62. Their den was found at the Santa Susana Field Lab in the Simi Hills, a small area of habitat wedged between the larger Santa Monica and Santa Susana mountain ranges. It is an important corridor linking the Santa Monica Mountains with the extensive undeveloped habitat to the north that also holds the Sespe Condor Sanctuary. Los Angeles is one of only two mega-cities with big cats living within the urban area. (Mumbai, India is the other.)
Researchers visited the den while the mother was away. The 4 to 5 pound babies had a general health check, blood samples taken, and were given ear tags labelling them P-66 through P-69.
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The babies weren’t pleased to be visited by researchers.
This is the first den found in the Simi Hills, an area once occupied by movie ranches, used for open-air testing of rocket engines, and the site of the meltdown of an experimental nuclear reactor in 1959. Now, due to groundwater contaminated with toxins and radionuclides, the area is proposed for cleanup and preservation as open space. The mountain lion mama and her four babies already have made it their own.
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