Ventura County ordinance gives animals room to roam

GUEST OPInion /// Wildlife protection



His short life ended with a sickening thud on a Ventura County freeway. When the mountain lion kitten became roadkill two years ago, he made headlines for perishing just weeks after his mother was killed on the same part of Highway 118.

Car collisions are a key reason why mountain lions are on the verge of extinction here in Southern California. As development reaches into our last wild places, animals of all kinds are pushed onto roadways, with lethal results for them—and plenty of risk for human drivers. Now Ventura County is fighting back.

County supervisors are poised to adopt a first-of-its-kind ordinance to protect wildlife and the community. The ordinance would give animals like mountain lions room to roam by helping ensure long-term connectivity between the Santa Monica Mountains and Los Padres National Forest. Protective measures like this ordinance are badly needed.

Our planet is enduring what scientists call the sixth mass extinction, with as many as 30 to 50 percent of species potentially going extinct by mid-century. Habitat loss and fragmentation are leading factors.

Here in Southern California, our Santa Monica and Santa Ana mountain lions struggle to avoid highways, development and rat poison’s toxic threat. Because of isolation caused by severe habitat fragmentation, these populations suffer the lowest genetic diversity of any Western population, making them vulnerable to disease.

As a top predator with expansive home ranges, the cougar aids natural dynamics that keep native wildlife and vegetation healthy, which benefits the entire ecosystem, including humans.

Take the eastern U.S., where eastern pumas have been wiped out completely. Deer populations have surged, leading to increases in tick-borne diseases that threaten human health. This overabundance also causes overgrazed vegetation and more collisions between deer and automobiles.

Ventura County’s ordinance could help our region avoid a similar fate by safeguarding known wildlife corridors. The ordinance would limit disturbances to lions by encouraging clustering of development, establishing setbacks from streams and wildlife-crossing structures, and prohibiting excessive lighting and wildlife-impermeable fencing.

Such measures are crucial to mountain lions because they’re extremely sensitive to human activities and development. One study found that when mountain lions hear human voices, they immediately leave the area— even if that means abandoning their prey.

The ordinance also will give other animals room to find food, shelter and mates as climate change and development intensify. That could help save California’s official state amphibian—the California red-legged frog—as well as creatures like the southern steelhead trout.

Despite this ordinance’s benefits, a well-funded opposition campaign has circulated inaccurate information. The campaign’s attorneys claim the ordinance would increase wildfire danger by limiting defensible space. Not true, according to experts at the Ventura County Fire Protection District, which concluded the ordinance has sufficient fire safety measures.

Excessive removal of native vegetation far from structures can actually spread non-native grasses and weeds that intensify wildfire conditions, according to studies by U.S. Geological Survey scientists. The ordinance could reduce wildfire threats to property by encouraging development in existing communities instead of in fire-prone wildlands.

Opponents also assert that the science supporting the corridors is outdated. But the ordinance is actually based on the best available science, including consultations with the National Park Service, Caltrans, UC Berkeley and conservation organizations.

If corridor areas change over time, Ventura County’s ordinance can be updated based upon further studies. What we shouldn’t do is sit on our hands while species slide toward extinction.

J.P. Rose is a staff attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity’s Urban Wildlands program.