Mountain Lions: Real Threat to Bay Area Hikers?
A nice podcast from NPR’s Bay Curious. Wilmers likes to tell people it’s far more risky to drive a car or even brush your teeth. One of his favorite comparisons is how many people impale themselves on their toothbrush and die. You can download the full podcast...
How fear of humans can ripple through food webs and reshape landscapes
A great article by Liza Gross at Smithsonian magazine on how fear of humans ripples through food webs - inspired by our recent paper. In reality, neither the frogs nor the man were real; both were audio recordings. The big cat, a six-year-old male named 66M, was part...
Good news: Mountain lions are afraid of you, too
More on our puma fearing people paper from Peter Fimrite at the SF Chronicle and Paul Rogers at the San Jose Mercury news.“People allude to this idea all the time — that mountain lions are more afraid of us than we are of them. But science has never shown that...
Mountain lions are terrified by the voices of Rush Limbaugh and Rachel Maddow
Great article on our recent paper on how puma's fear people in the Washington Post. Then political commentator Rachel Maddow's voice fills the clearing: “Last Friday, three days after Bobby Jindal quit …" The lion lifts its head, and its eyes, glowing in the scant...
Pumas feel the fear near humans
Justine's recent paper in the Proceedings of Royal Society B received quite a bit of attention from the press. Reports about it appeared in Science, Nature, BBC and the Naked Scientists among others. Here's snippet from Nature Female pumas that live near human...
Conservationists of the Year for 2014
The Land Trust of Santa Cruz County Board of Trustees named Dr. Jodi McGraw and Dr. Chris Wilmers Conservationists of the Year at an event on Sunday, October 5. The award was in recognition of their work in setting the priorities of the Land Trust and in educating the...
Wild cats need to count calories, too
Science coverage or our - wait for it - article in Science. With all the "coverage", does any read the original article? A sleek cheetah races with legs outstretched, leaping with a great burst of energy to bring down a fast-moving antelope. That iconic image of this...
Cheetahs and pumas may have hunting strategies down to a science
Another nice article on our recent Science paper. This one in the LA Times. It's not easy being a lean, mean killing machine. Whether a fleet-footed cheetah or a lie-in-wait puma, a hunting feline’s survival balances on the point between how much energy they lose in...
Pumas Trained to Run on Treadmill Help Explain Big Cat’s Ambush Strategy
A nice article in National Geographic on our recent Science paper on puma energetics. The group, led by Terrie Williams and Chris Wilmers of the University of California, Santa Cruz, spent years working with engineers to develop a novel wildlife tracking collar to...
Scientists highlight global importance of meat-eating mammals
Coverage in the Sentinel about our carnivore paper in Science today. Two UC Santa Cruz ecologists are among the authors of a global review of large carnivore populations published Jan. 10 in the journal Science. The international group of scientists warns that...
