History of Mountain Lions Changed by One Cougar
On September 22, 2020, a Monrovia resident saw a female mountain lion in his yard licking her paws, which were burned and bleeding from the Bobcat Fire burning in the mountains above town.
The homeowner, Gary Potter, heard a sharp cry outside and found the cat sitting in the open in broad daylight. He contacted the Cougar Conservancy, which coordinated with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to tranquilize and bring her in. Between six and seven years old, she had severe burns across all four paw pads. Unable to stalk prey or climb, biologists estimated she would have starved to death within days if left on the street.
Because she was a healthy, prime-age adult that had survived for years in the San Gabriel Mountains without causing trouble for humans, state wildlife veterinarian Deana Clifford and her team decided to try putting her back in the mountains instead of euthanizing her.
Veterinarians at the University of California, Davis treated her burned feet using sterilized tilapia skin grafts, a technique rich in collagen that speeds up tissue regeneration, paired with cold laser light therapy to prevent infection. Over five weeks in recovery, the grafts took hold, fresh pad tissue grew back, and the cat put on 19 pounds.
On October 23, 2020, biologists fitted the lion, now named Monrovia, with a GPS satellite collar and released her into an unburned section of the Angeles National Forest about 15 miles from where she was captured. Korinna Domingo, founder of the Cougar Conservancy, called the release a historic moment for the state.
Within weeks, remote trail cameras caught Monrovia walking smoothly across steep rock, traveling alongside an adult male cougar, and taking down mule deer on her healed paws. For the next ten months, she held down a territory along the urban edge of the San Gabriel foothills between Azusa and Burbank, slipping past backyards and hiking trails in one of the most heavily populated regions in the country without a single human conflict.
Around August 15, 2021, her satellite collar sent a mortality signal from the bottom of a deep canyon in the mountains above Monrovia. Biologists hiked in and recovered her body, though a field necropsy could not determine what killed the eight-year-old cat.
Even so, her ten months back on the mountain rewrote state wildlife policy. Once Monrovia proved an adult cougar could survive hospital care and go right back to hunting deer, California established a formal wildfire rescue protocol that has since saved and treated multiple burned mountain lions across the state.
"She literally changed the history of mountain lions to come after her," Domingo said.
Source: The Lonely Camp | CBS Los Angeles | CDFW | Cougar Conservancy | SF Chronicle | AP | MyNewsLA | HeySoCal
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