Big Cats and the Border

New evidence reveals that mountain lions can fit through small wildlife crossing cut-outs on the border wall dividing the U.S. from Mexico. But researchers are concerned about the future connection of the population of the big cats. 

In this episode of “Our Wild Lives,” carnivore ecologist Lisanne Petracca walks us through the monitoring being done to determine the potential effects of the construction of the 30 foot high wall along the Texas border on mountain lions (Puma concolor). 

Preliminary results show that openings the size of a sheet of paper could be the solution keeping the United States and Mexico populations connected. 

“Our Wild Lives” is The Wildlife Society’s biweekly podcast, sharing compelling stories from wildlife professionals doing critical work around the world. Your hosts, Katie Perkins and Ed Arnett, of The Wildlife Society, bring you thought-provoking conversations with leading experts and emerging voices. New episodes are released weekly wherever you get your podcasts.

Read more: 

About Lisanne Petracca: https://www.tamuk.edu/agriculture/departments/rwsc/faculty-staff-rwsc/Petracca.html

Spatial and Population Ecology of Carnivores (SPEC) Lab: https://thespeclab.weebly.com/

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Transcript

[00:00:01] Katie Perkins: Along the Southern United States border, nearly 30-foot-tall metal barriers are slicing through the landscape along the Rio Grande River. As more of the pieces click into place, researchers are beginning to wonder how wildlife will adapt.

 That's what today's guest, Lisanne Petracca, has set out to do. Together with her team, she's leading the first monitoring study of mountain lions in South Texas in over 30 years. 

In this episode, Lisanne walks us through the methods behind the study and what early data is revealing about movement corridors, connectivity, and survival in a rapidly fragmenting landscape. 

I'm Katie Perkins with additional reporting for this episode by Joshua Learn, and this is the Our Wild Lives Podcast brought to you by The Wildlife Society.

[00:00:58] Lisanne Petracca: My name is Lisanne [00:01:00] Petracca and I am an assistant professor of carnivore ecology at the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. 

[00:01:10] Josh Learn: And tell us what you're working on right now. 

[00:01:12] Lisanne Petracca: So I lead a number of carnivore projects ranging from work on ocelots here in South Texas to bobcats, coyotes, and also mountain lions at the border barrier system.

[00:01:27] Josh Learn: And just before anything, how did you get from Africa? Because I remember I talked to you like, uh, I think a while back, right after the conference. 

[00:01:34] Lisanne Petracca: Yeah. Yeah. So I was working for Panthera at the time as a conservation scientist, Panthera, you know, being one of the, I think it's the only nonprofit, solely dedicated to conservation of wild cats. And, I was working there, and then around the same time, I also got my PhD and I realized, wow, academia seems like a way that I can have a bigger impact in [00:02:00] terms of leading my own research, being able to mentor young people.

And yeah, just be able to kind of express some academic creativity, I guess. And so I started applying for academic jobs, landed at the University of Washington studying gray wolves, and then I'm now in South Texas studying ocelots, mountain lions and other carnivores.

[00:02:24] Josh Learn: Tell us about your, your work with the, with cougars or I guess mountain lions down here.

[00:02:27] Lisanne Petracca: Yeah, we call them mountain lions down here. So, we are looking at kind of large scale distribution of mountain lion as a function of presence of the border barrier system, all the way from basically, uh, Maverick/Dimmit counties straight down through to Cameron County. So the four southernmost counties in Texas, the barrier has been present for a longer period of time and it's quite continuous. And as you move to the northwest, the barrier is not continuous and expansion is happening like in [00:03:00] stages, and that's where the mountain lions are.

So we have put collars on 11 lions. Seven females, four males. And yeah, we are investigating, um, how their movement behaviors are affected by the border barrier system. We are also monitoring openings in the border barrier that are the size of a piece of paper. So eight and a half by 11 inches. Every half mile or so there is this opening kind of soldered into the, the wall and it is meant to be like a small wildlife passage. And so for the past year and a half, we have been monitoring those openings to see if any lions have used them. 

[00:03:49] Josh Learn: It's like cat doors. 

[00:03:51] Lisanne Petracca : Yes. And they are designed explicitly to permit medium-bodied wildlife, but not people.

[00:04:00] So javelina, uh, whitetailed deer, you know, hogs would have tremendous difficulty fitting through, but, you know, bobcat, coyote, raccoon, those bodied species and smaller could, could fit. And so our task was, will mountain lions use these crossings? 

[00:04:18] Josh Learn: And what have you found so far? 

[00:04:20] Lisanne Petracca : Well, we were monitoring consistently for a year and a half.

And found just this past February we saw P4, a female, use it once. So we have finally, after all of those many months of monitoring those crossings, we found that a female lion had indeed used it. In the past, 'cause again, where we're studying lions, there is, um, ongoing barrier construction and in the past, we had thought lions were using the openings, but instead they were exploiting this gap [00:05:00] between where wall was being constructed and an adjacent high fence.

So that's where lions were getting through javelina, hog, white-tailed deer, just all of these, these, these individuals were using that gap. So we had been fooled in the thinking lions had used, they're on one side of the barrier and then on the other, oh my goodness. It happens. But since then, that gap has been closed by barrier construction.

And so it could be that now that P4, that individual can no longer use that gap that it knows, it has discovered the crossing that does exist. And so we've seen one crossing in, you know, a year plus of monitoring those structures. 

[00:05:44] Josh Learn: Are you monitoring those other animals or is it like this just with collars or also like trail cameras or what? 

[00:05:50] Lisanne Petracca : Good question. So we have every single crossing monitored with a camera trap, one on each side of the barrier. So we will [00:06:00] see approaches, we will see behavioral response. The only individuals we have GPS collared are the mountain lions. But with the cameras, we can get footage of, of lions that are collared and those that are not collared, but basically if there's an unmarked lion, we pretty much capture it and get it within our study.

[00:06:21] Josh Learn: How many or do you think are out there? Lions total in that area? 

[00:06:25] Lisanne Petracca : We certainly haven't captured all of them. So we have put GPS collars on 11 of them and there, there are others. You'll see one that is unmarked that will appear, but then, you know, it's gone. Or we had our eye on these two sub-adults when we mobilized to capture them, they had dispersed.

So there are others out there for sure. We have collared two now in Val Verde County and there's quite a bit more up there. But our focal area to answer the questions that, [00:07:00] that we are being hired to answer, we need to focus where there's barrier. And that is in the Maverick/Dimmick County areas, and that's where we have nine of our collared individuals.

[00:07:10] Josh Learn: So paper sized opening, mountain lion. I mean, 

[00:07:13] Lisanne Petracca : Yes, 

[00:07:14] Josh Learn: I'm Canadian and I'm thinking mountain lions are pretty big up where I'm from in Alberta. 

[00:07:19] Lisanne Petracca : Right, yeah. 

[00:07:19] Josh Learn: Um, they, how is it? Is it a small female? Like how did it, 

[00:07:23] Lisanne Petracca : So mountain lions do kind of vary in size across the range. We in South Texas tend to have smaller bodied mountain lions.

And P4 did they say that if a cat can get its head through, it can get the rest of its body through, and that's what we found. I think it's just, uh, a cat thing, right? Like if a cat can get its head through of, of any species, it can fit the rest of its body through. Like cats can move through some pretty small openings. And so there was also footage out of Arizona, so they were the first to document this kind of crossing a female and her cubs got [00:08:00] through.

But yeah, our lions have tended to be between like 90 pounds and like 125 pounds. They're just not very big you know, compared to lions elsewhere, I know that there are big toms roaming around. Um, but if their skull can fit, the animal can fit. 

So, and then, yeah, we saw a female, I don't know to date, I'm not up to date on, on their stuff, whether or not they've seen males get through. We have not, um, or any other individuals other than that famous female that I've seen the video of. We have since put like a, a nice camera on that crossing, such that if an animal comes through again, we'll have like really nice video as opposed to just the, um, the photos that were, that were there.

But it was very exciting when, PhD student, Chloe Nouzille said, "I think we may have had a lion use the crossing. I'm like, get out there now. Get out there right now, get [00:09:00] those SD cards, tell me what we've got." And sure enough, it had used the crossing. So it was pretty exciting. So that speaks to an uh, an amelioration of this clear connectivity issue that we have. We have lions on the American side. We have lions on the Mexican side. We're still doing genetic work to determine where that source population of South Texas mountain lions are. Is it Mexico? Is it West Texas? But I do think that putting up a nine meter tall barrier has obvious implications for gene flow and connectivity.

But with what we're seeing with these crossings. You know, it could certainly mitigate those impacts, but we're way too early on to tell, will lions continue to use these and will it be at a level that is enough to maintain gene flow with Mexico? It's just too soon. 

[00:09:55] Josh Learn: So you kind of have a bit of a before/after study 'cause you kind of have these natural [00:10:00] gaps still without just the kitty doors.

Right. So like at this point right now. A little bit. 

[00:10:04] Lisanne Petracca : Yeah. There are still, though construction is happening like in real time in our study area. So areas that that didn't have wall now have a border barrier. So, yeah, it's been really interesting. A master's student, Katie McDaniel, found that after a year of monitoring, there was higher expected count of lions where the barrier was absent. So where there is barrier there, we have less photos of lions showing up. So, um, there is that preliminary signal that, the border barrier is, is reducing our, our images and therefore habitat use in those areas. Now, whether it's in direct response to construction and something that maybe, you know, in six months time, you know, lions will come back through.

We're still monitoring. We'll figure that out. 

[00:10:57] Josh Learn: So I guess they can swim. Like the [00:11:00] river itself is not an, is not a barrier or 

[00:11:02] Lisanne Petracca : The river is not a barrier? No, there's areas where the river is actually quite narrow. And there's areas where it's not very deep. But even if it was quite wide and, uh, at a depth that where they could not walk lions, could still swim that. Yeah. 

[00:11:19] Josh Learn: Have you seen that, like in the tracking data where they 

[00:11:21] Lisanne Petracca : We have, so they're regularly, they're regularly crossing the Rio onto the Mexican side quite regularly, so we call them our dual citizen lions. They're spending time both in our study area and then they go off to Mexico. We did lose one of our lions by poisoning on the Mexico side.

[00:11:39] Josh Learn: How did you find that out? 

[00:11:41] Lisanne Petracca : Well, its collar was tossed into the Rio Grande and we had learned that the landowner where the collar was retrieved had been putting out like poison baits for predators, including mountain lions. Yeah. [00:12:00] That's the only mortality we've had of a collared lion was that one.

[00:12:04] Josh Learn: Do you think it affects the flow of prey to the wall? 

[00:12:08] Lisanne Petracca : Yes. The fact that whitetailed deer being certainly a major prey item for mountain lion. They cannot fit through the wall fawns maybe, but that would be odd 'cause then they would be separated from the mother. So, yes. You know, some people are speculating, oh, maybe the, the barrier could serve as this cool funnel where lions can kind of corner white-tailed deer and could make for an easier predation event. Right? But I think that largely, you know, if, if lion are going after deer the fact that they would be on one side and not the other has obvious implications for that landscape of where prey will be.

[00:12:47] Josh Learn: But I guess there's no shortage of deer on either side.

[00:12:49] Lisanne Petracca : No shortage of deer, especially on the Texas side.

You know, these are high fenced areas managed for wildlife, for whitetailed deer in particular. So no shortage on the [00:13:00] Texas side. 

[00:13:01] Josh Learn: So what, I mean, where do the, like on the Texas side, they spend most of their time in some of these wildlife refuges that are along the border, or where are they? 

[00:13:07] Lisanne Petracca : They are almost exclusively found on privately owned ranches. Similar to the story of the ocelot. Um, and I'm sure the ferruginous pygmy owl as well, where in Texas, given that over 95% of the land is private, wildlife conservation relies on conservation on private lands. 

[00:13:28] Josh Learn: Yeah. Speak to that a little bit more just in terms of your ocelot work as well, 

[00:13:31] Lisanne Petracca : Yeah, I think that, um, I personally have never worked in a state with this great a proportion of private land. So, you know, you're used to working you know, in national parks or state parks or wildlife refuges and areas where you submit a permit and you can go and, you know, study wildlife in those areas.

But here it is different to where private landowners give permission and they can rescind that permission [00:14:00] at any time if they find that, your work isn't aligning with their values or, you know, maybe there's been a change of ownership or just for, for any reason under the sun. So, so that relationship between an institute like Caesar Kleberg and private landowners is really, really important.

Building that trust. Allowing privacy. Allowing landowners to manage their land the way they want while also pursuing conservation goals is really important.

[00:14:30] Josh Learn: You're, aren't you doing the ocelots? It's a Laguna, is it that 

[00:14:34] Lisanne Petracca : Laguna Atascosa. That, that is a national wildlife refuge? Yeah. So there's so ocelots, you know, we call it the ranch population and we have the refuge population. So you know, we're all one team. One of those populations is exclusively on private land.

That's the ranch. And then the other one is at Laguna Atascosa, which is publicly held. Separated by 20 kilometers or so, [00:15:00] and, um, had been considered genetically isolated for decades until recent evidence that there is some gene flow. And that was led by a master's student of mine, Tyler Boswick, she found that since 2017, there has been movement of individuals between these two populations, which kind of blew up that paradigm of these long separated ocelot populations.

[00:15:23] Josh Learn: So Ocelot is particular because you've just got like one or one two places where they are, period. 

[00:15:30] Lisanne Petracca : Mm-hmm. 

[00:15:30] Josh Learn: You know, in the US full stop.

Right. I mean, pumas cougars, mountain lions are a lot of other places, how do they navigate this landscape? You know what I mean? I'm just, they're not an endangered species, so maybe it's not as, as difficult, but like, you know, what are some of the other conservation issues that they might face in Texas and how, 

[00:15:48] Lisanne Petracca : Sure. So I think the obvious one is the fact that they're, um, they're non-game, they're not managed as a game species, so there's currently no [00:16:00] regulatory authority that manages their take. So, Texas is the only state in the United States with breeding populations of mountain lions with no management plan.

So here you can take lions at any time. In any quantity. By any means. And that's just how it's been for a long time. And so there has been mountain lions are seen as vermin. They are heavily persecuted. So that is something that because they are not managed it could, uh, cause them to be more vulnerable to population decline. My role is to collect as much information as we can on mountain lions. Their numbers, their distribution, their habitat use, um, how the border barrier impacts their movements, so that we can make informed decisions moving forward on, you know, what is the status of [00:17:00] lions in, in South Texas?

[00:17:02] Josh Learn: Is the government looking to make a decision about that, like the state government or, 

[00:17:06] Lisanne Petracca : I think that, yeah, there's, there's talk of not a management plan so much as kind of like a, a monitoring plan, such that we can collect the necessary data streams to know the status of lions in, in Texas. 

[00:17:27] Josh Learn: So they're not just vermin anymore.

[00:17:29] Lisanne Petracca : They are still as of now. Um, but we'll see how that changes. And, being a private land state, it's really interesting, something like, mandatory harvest reporting is something that wouldn't be out of the question, in other Western states, but that kind of thing. Yeah.

I think that Texans really appreciate the ability to live their lives on their land the way they want to. And I think that having any type of regulation may not be perceived super [00:18:00] positively. So it's just a whole different set of, of circumstances down here. 

[00:18:06] Josh Learn: So you talk about like conservation on private lands and stuff, and, and your, you know, how, from your perspective, like you were saying that like, you know, you've gotta deal with things differently and approach things differently.

What do private landowners benefit from having a, a puma or a ocelot on their ranch? 

[00:18:25] Lisanne Petracca : Um, a lot of landowners would say that there isn't anything to be gained by having those species on their land. They would say mountain lions take my deer and ocelots, uh, get federal involvement. And I don't want anyone encroaching upon my ability to manage my land.

Ecologically, um, you know, given that mountain lions are the apex predator on the landscape, of course there's a lot of benefits that come from having predators on the landscape in [00:19:00] terms of, you know, prey regulation and just their presence in general just means that landscapes are being managed to support that, that structure, right, of predator prey dynamics.

And ocelots in general just have such cultural importance. This is the only place that they're still found in the United States, and that's really, really, really cool. They also don't depredate livestock, so they don't generate the same ill will perhaps that mountain lions do. So yeah, I think that having ocelots on the landscape, they like the brush.

Uh, so it keeps this tamaulipan thornscrub community intact that has been 90% reduced, you know, over the past a hundred years or so. So I think it just allows for the maintenance of these really important, you know, vegetation, and also prey communities.

[00:19:56] Katie Perkins: Stay with us. We'll be right back after this message. [00:20:00] Whether you're a student, early career professional, or seasoned biologist, The Wildlife Society has the tools to help you grow. From career resources and job boards to science-based publications and networking, TWS is your professional home. Learn more at wildlife.org

Are there any other solutions to allowing wildlife to cross through these border barriers as they're being built? Is there something else that could be done.

[00:20:26] Lisanne Petracca : I think that, the wildlife crossings are a good first step. We have seen that a female was able to use it, the eight and a half, the eight and a half by 11 openings. The issue is if it is not discriminatory enough then could it allow human passage? And I think that's the main point of this border barrier is to completely prevent the passage of people from Mexico into the United States.

I was talking with a guy in Australia about use of artificial intelligence gates. For [00:21:00] example, if you pick up the form of a mountain lion approaching, you know, it opens and then, you know, if it's a person, it closes, you know, but then you, you wonder, could people?

[00:21:11] Katie Perkins: Trojan horse it.

[00:21:11] Lisanne Petracca: Yeah, could people find, find a way around that. Right. So there's really, really cool applications of these AI gates. Whether or not we can get the state or federal government to implement such a thing on the border barrier is, well, it's unlikely, possibly quite a lofty goal. I think that in general, the, the existence of those eight and a half by elevens is really great, but also putting them in the right places.

So what we've done as an actual mitigation strategy was recommend to these foremen to start placing those crossings where lions will actually use them rather than just being, you know, randomly every half mile or so. They would be, you know, on either side of a arroyos where, so lions are coming up through these stream corridors and then they hit the border barrier. We're seeing that with their, [00:22:00] with their collar data. And,so putting them in places where lions will actually discover them and use them is important. To that end, I have a master's student, Ray Turner, who is actually baiting the openings now using predator calls, olfactory lures, so smelly stuff that carnivores are attracted to, and also shiny things. So using a combination of audio olfactory and visual lures to get lions to discover them. So I think that the cat passages are a good start putting them in the right places and also getting lions to see them, um, are also, uh, some things that we're actively working on.

[00:22:44] Katie Perkins: Is a thought behind that, that eventually it would become a learned behavior and be passed through generations for them to use the gates. 

[00:22:52] Lisanne Petracca : Yeah, I think the goal is to increase discoverability to see, 'cause we can't do this lure study forever. [00:23:00] Right? And such that those locations then become imprinted, you know, mothers could pass down to their cubs. And that, yeah, we would not need to continuously place baits, you know, at these openings forever and ever.

[00:23:14] Katie Perkins: How many generations would that take?

[00:23:16] Lisanne Petracca : Yeah, I'm not sure. I think that it'd be interesting to see, you know, once those lures are removed, does that individual lion continue to use it? Suggesting that even when that stimulus is removed, the behavior continues. And then you would yeah, if mom passes to cub, then cubs got it and then cub passes to their offspring. And so that would be the ideal situation. 

[00:23:39] Katie Perkins: Mm-hmm. Could they make the opening? 'cause you, you know, you mentioned females are using it and cubs are using it, but males aren't. 

[00:23:47] Lisanne Petracca : Not yet. Not yet. Yeah. Not, I think that a sub-adult, if a female, if an adult female could get through, I think a sub-adult male of dispersal age could, and those are the ones that we want to see [00:24:00] with gene flow moving, moving from one area to another. So I have hope that the current size is adequate. And then, you know, the bigger you make that, could that be permitting human movement through the barrier, which is completely not the intention. 

[00:24:15] Katie Perkins: What work is being done on the Mexican side of the border or is there any collaboration happening with scientists on the other side? 

[00:24:21] Lisanne Petracca : Good question. So we currently have five of our collars with essentially the State University of Nuevo Leon. Which is opposite us on the Mexican side. Our program manager, Robert Alonso was able to train one of their graduate students in, for instance, like how to use the dart projector. Walked him through working up a cat, how to collar an animal safely, so he was able to lead one of their team members in that training.

We are hoping to get those collars out. I do believe they [00:25:00] have an unmarked cat or two on the Mexican side, so we are actively working with them. The principal investigator is Rogelio Carrera, and he's a really important part of our project as well. Yeah, it's, it's all a work in progress. Um, we'd love to deploy those five collars by the time this project is is up.

[00:25:21] Josh Learn: Tell us a story about trapping and darting a cat? 

[00:25:24] Lisanne Petracca : Man, well, Robert Alonso is our lead guy. I think he'd do a really, a, a much more thorough job, but essentially we trap lions with cable restraint snares and Robert designs them to be very, very particular to mountain lion weight. So there's not much bycatch and such that there is very low risk of injury.

And he does that, you know, with tubing and, you know, double swivels and ways such that you know, a cat tying itself up, breaking a bone, you know, those types of [00:26:00] things would, would pretty much not happen. And so putting in these sets, you're looking for sign of mountain lion, whether it's a scrape, whether it's tracks, and you put a set into the ground and you anchor that into the ground.

And when there is a lion, we have cell cameras out. So when we have a lion, we know in the moment that we have one and we respond. And so we use a dart projector to you're aiming for the hindquarters of the animal. We use, uh, a ketamine medetomidine mixture for the, for the sedation process. And you definitely wanna make sure that animal is down before you approach.

'Cause these are, you know, a hundred pound wild animals that are frightened and dangerous. And yeah, once it's safe to approach, [00:27:00] you always have to give a bit of time before the lion goes down. Then you get to work and we take blood, we take hair, we put in an ear tag, we put on a GPS collar. We try to collect scat if there is any, for a diet study that we're working on, and we ensure that you know, vitals are goods, that body temperature is goods. And, you wanna have a workup done, you know, in 30 to 40 minutes, and then you can reverse it. And then you back away, let the animal recover and it goes on its merry way with a cool new GPS collar around its neck. 

[00:27:41] Josh Learn: By back away you mean run like hell, right? 

[00:27:44] Lisanne Petracca : Yeah. No, you definitely wanna make sure you're not in an obvious movement path. You wanna be, you wanna make sure that it's safe, but you don't wanna get in their way.

[00:27:51] Josh Learn: Is there one story that you remember where things went a bit sideways or didn't go exactly as planned? 

[00:27:58] Lisanne Petracca : I've been lucky to be [00:28:00] on Robert's captures and they have gone really, really well. I know that there was one capture that Robert was on with our PhD student, Chloe Nouzille, where there was like a flash flood and the recovering cat like the water level was rising, rising, rising, and the team had to act quickly to get that cat to higher ground and to keep it warm. And yeah. And that cat's still a part of our study, but you never know what Mother Nature will bring.

[00:28:28] Katie Perkins: You kind touched on it earlier, but maybe you could just go a little more in depth. Why is it important to have lions on the landscape?

[00:28:34] Lisanne Petracca : I think it's important to have mountain lions on the landscape because well first of all, I think that it's the symbol of like having an intact landscape where you have, you know, your apex predator and then your meso predators and then your prey, and I think it's the sign of a quote-unquote, healthy ecosystem where every [00:29:00] species is playing. Its given role in an ecosystem. And when that apex predator disappears, you know, if you look out over the eastern United States, you know, mountain lions had been there. Now we don't have them anymore. And you can see how whitetailed deer populations are just through the roof.

So it is a real thing that apex predators do serve an important role in regulation of prey. Also, I think, I can't underestimate also just the intrinsic value of having mountain lions out there. Um, just these symbols of this wild America, these wild, rugged landscapes.

And I think that when we start losing mountain lions, we lose a part of our country and our identity that is wild and adventurous and interesting and, and still not completely disturbed by human presence. [00:30:00] So. I know that there are plenty of people who don't wish to have lions on the landscape, but I do think that they're an important part of Texas.

I think they're an important part of the United States. And also just yeah, that, that role that they fill in an ecosystem and then when left unchecked can have some, unanticipated and negative repercussions. 

[00:30:24] Katie Perkins: Is there any argument to be made that the mountain lion populations can just move northwards and you know, if they get cut off from the southern population? It's fine, they'll just start moving their genes up north or is, is it really vital that they're able to continue sharing those genes south?

[00:30:42] Lisanne Petracca : Well we are currently at the, one of the eastern edges of colonization of mountain lions further east. Um, moving north you're only getting into more, um, you're moving into the hill country, you're [00:31:00] moving up to the panhandle like, I think that you know, we are seeing, we're seeing mountain lions in Nebraska. We're seeing them further east, and depending on your views on carnivores, that's either a great thing or a not so great thing. But I think that's any habitat where mountain lions currently are you know, that's, that's pretty special and I would hate to lose that and restrict the range even further.

And yeah, given the geography of Texas I would say that they that, yeah, the south and west Texas populations are, are the stronghold and I don't know what the alternative would be within the state. 

[00:31:40] Katie Perkins: You know, What does a successful future for mountain lions in Texas and in relation to the border barrier, what does success look like in 10, 15, 20 years?

Right. 

[00:31:50] Lisanne Petracca : So I see myself as like the bringer of like scientific reason to this whole mountain lion issue [00:32:00] in, in Texas. What I want is to provide information about their numbers, their distribution, their status, that is helpful to landowners, that is helpful to the state agency.

That is helpful for Texans coexisting with these animals. But then when it comes to the border barrier, my express goal is to determine whether or not the border barrier is impacting line movements. And if they are what are ways to mitigate that? And so my role is to provide that information. It is not my role to, to lobby for things that I personally find important, it is to provide the information. And so if I can just keep providing information as a trusted scientific source, then I will have done my job.

This is a multi-partner effort and that nothing exists in a vacuum. I'm grateful. [00:33:00] The members of my team, I'm really grateful for Customs and border protection. You know, through US Fish and Wildlife they're the ones funding all of our work at the border barrier. So like big thanks to them for seeing the value of this work.

And yeah, it's just been a really cool to start something new. Something I didn't mention is that, you know, these are the first collars going on mountain lions in South Texas in 30 years. Just no one has studied this species in this area for so long. So it's just an honor to be a part of it, and I hope to be able to continue doing this moving forward.

[00:33:36] Katie Perkins: Thank you. 

[00:33:37] Lisanne Petracca : Thank you.