The reintroduction of a few mountain lions into a small nature preserve can make big changes to the ecological community. Researchers tracking wildlife using trail cameras at Stanford University’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve south of San Francisco from 2015 to 2020 found a big drop in deer activity when mountain lions (Puma concolor) began to regularly visit the area. The drop in ungulates meant that some plants deer often browse or trample began to thrive more, the researchers found. “In the past, small preserves like Jasper Ridge have often been dismissed for holding very little ecological value, but this study shows that when these small preserves are connected to large wilderness like the Santa Cruz Mountains, you can still see magnificent ecological phenomena like trophic cascades,” said Chinmay Sonawane, the first author of the study published recently in Ecology and Evolution and doctoral student in biology in Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences, in a press release.
