News

As Los Angeles prepares to celebrate the life of beloved mountain lion P-22 this weekend,  mountain lion mortality maps from the University of California, Davis, show that many cougars suffer similar fates along California’s roads and highways.

Check out this interview with Winston Vickers, current project lead for our California Mountain Lion Project and Dr. Jessica Sanchez, a postdoctoral fellow at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.

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Members of Shedd Aquarium’s animal care team recently returned from South America, where they monitored a wild Magellanic penguin colony and collected guano samples for future analysis. The samples will help reveal the diets of these animals, which live in a variable and unpredictable zone in terms of food resources, to ensure their prey are identified and protected.

A mountain gorilla walks in the forest of East Africa’s Virunga Volcanoes conservation area. It stops at a piece of wild celery, sits down, and begins to chew. It strips the vegetable’s fibrous threads through its teeth, extracting the fleshy, juicy bits, then drops the chewed stalk on the ground and ambles away. 

*Update as of Tuesday, October 11: An additional 12 whales have been found dead, bringing the total count to 30 whales (26 adults and 4 juveniles) for this event. More info here.

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#SiguiendoBallenas | Con el récord de transmisión histórico del proyecto, el dispositivo satelital de Amalthea dejó de emitir señal luego de 302 días desde su marcado en las aguas de Península Valdés.

Así, a dos meses del lanzamiento de una nueva temporada, se dio por finalizada la sexta edición del proyecto de seguimiento satelital de ballenas francas australes.

Wildlife Health Center Research Associate Dr. Frances Gulland was designated as the Chair of the Marine Mammal Commission (MMC) on May 4, 2022. She replaces Dr. Daryl Boness, who will remain as one of the three Commissioners with Dr. Michael Tillman. Dr. Gulland joined the Committee of Scientific Advisors of the MMC in 2000, and was appointed and Senate-confirmed to serve as one of three Commissioners in 2011. The MMC works to ensure that marine mammal populations are restored and maintained as functioning elements of healthy marine ecosystems in the world's oceans.

Join us in welcoming Dr. Justin Dellinger, the new lead for the California Mountain Lion Project!

He is originally from western North Carolina and grew up in the Appalachian Mountains. He conducted research on red wolf foraging and spatial ecology and gray wolf-prey interactions as part of different graduate programs. He has also worked as a biologist for different tribes doing mountain lion and gray wolf work. More recently, he worked for the California Department of Fish & Wildlife for just over 6 years, where he served as a large carnivore researcher.

Hundreds of fish species live in the Salish Sea, and many face a number of threats. Monitoring the health of these fish populations is crucial. But with nearly 5,000 miles of coastline and more than 400 islands, it’s no small task.

Historically, monitoring fish populations has included fishery catch data, active trawl surveys, underwater video, satellite imagery, hydroacoustics and more. But citizen scientists are increasingly playing crucial roles, according to a study from the University of California, Davis.

Latin America Program Director Dr. Marcy Uhart has co-authored a recent publication on southern right whales:

• Christiansen, F., Uhart, M.M., Bejder, L., Clapham, P., Ivashchenko, Y., Tormosov, D., Lewin, N. & Sironi, M. 2022. Foetal growth, birth size and energetic cost of gestation in southern right whales. Journal of Physiology. https://doi.org/10.1113/JP282351

Mange has decimated the population of wild vicuñas and guanacos in an Argentinian national park that was created to conserve them, according to a study from the Administration of National Parks in Argentina and the University of California, Davis.

The findings, published today in the journal PLOS ONE, suggest domestic llamas introduced to the site may have been the source of the outbreak. Cascading consequences for local predator and scavenger species are expected.

The journeys of a group of southern right whales to their feeding grounds are being tracked by satellite telemetry and their routes can be seen at www.siguiendoballenas.org. The technology applied in the "Tracking Whales" project allows us to identify key environments in the South Atlantic to protect southern right whales throughout their life cycle.

Our Orcas-Island based program SeaDoc Society is hiring a regional director. The deadline to apply is January 29, 2020.

For more information on the position: 

SeaDoc Society website

A 2018 survey shows that mountain gorilla numbers have increased in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda and Sarambwe Reserve, DR Congo, according to the Uganda Wildlife Authority. The 2018 Bwindi-Sarambwe mountain gorilla survey found a minimum of 459 mountain gorillas in these regions, an increase from the previous survey estimate in 2011 of 400. When combined with the 2015-2016 population survey results of 604 mountain gorillas in the Virunga Massif, the total world population of endangered mountain gorillas now stands at 1,063.