A trio of not-so-ferocious-looking furry faces stare back at the cameraman peering inside their den.
Toothless mouths breathe silent roars as the lens probes deeper inside to take footage of the three newborn mountain lion kittens. They are all females.
The cubs’ mother, known as mountain lion P-77, is estimated to be between 5 and 6 years old. She was first captured in 2019 in the Simi Hills, a small region of habitat between the larger Santa Susana and Santa Monica Mountain ranges in Southern California.
Since then, biologists of the National Park Service (NPS) have been keeping tabs on the female big cat.
Recently, P-77 gave birth in a dense patch of poison oak nested among large boulders in the Simi Hills.
The biologists found the kittens on May 18. All three appeared healthy and, based on when P-77 arrived there, were determined to be 24 weeks old at the time, NPS stated in a press release.
The three sisters have been dubbed P-113, P-114, and P-115.
From remote camera images taken after P-77’s capture, it was determined that she'd had a previous litter before this one.
The father of the new litter is unknown, as there are no males currently being tracked between Freeways 101 and 118. The biologists suspect he inhabits somewhere in the Santa Susana Mountain range.
This is the third marked litter that has been located in the Simi Hills in this study. Biologists marked two previous litters here—those of mountain lion P-62 in 2018 and mountain lion P-67 in 2020. Both cats are now deceased, NPS stated.
The last two males tracked in the Simi Hills were P-64, who died in the Woolsey Fire in December 2018, and P-38, who was poached in July of 2019.
An NPS biologist noted that the current litter is the 25th to have been found in this particular den in the Simi Hills.
Using telemetry, the biologists timed their visit to coincide with the mother’s being away, either hunting, eating, or resting.
The den visit lasted less than an hour, during which time they performed a general health assessment of each kitten. The researchers determined their sex and weight, collected bio samples, and marked each with a unique number and colored ear tag.
These tags will help in identifying the cubs with remote cameras and fitting them with a collar for radio tracking when they get larger.
NPS has been studying mountain lions around the Santa Monica Mountains since 2002. Through this study, they hope to determine how local mountain lions survive in a fragmented and urbanized environment.
“It will be interesting to learn how these kittens will use the landscape once they get older and disperse, particularly if they decide to stay in the Simi Hills or cross freeways to enter larger natural areas,” said Jeff Sikich, lead field biologist of the NPS mountain lion study.
“It’s encouraging to see reproduction in our small population of mountain lions, especially after all the mortalities we have documented in the last year.”
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