Coastal western whiptail lizard | Photo: Jason Goldman
Its a few minutes before 8:00 a.m. The sun is low on the horizon, barely lighting up the oak-dotted canyons of Point Mugu State Park. The grey of the marine layer blends seamlessly into the sky, just barely transitioning into its familiar blue. The scrub jays have been flitting about for a while, and the crows are already hollering. In the distance you can make out the faint hum of early morning traffic. The repetitive lapping of the waves against the shore is just loud enough to notice. The coffee hasnt had quite enough time to kick in, but Seana Leary is already shoulder-deep in a bucket of lizards.
--
--
Leary is part of a team of interns with the National Park Services Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. Each morning, they fan out from the park services headquarters in Thousand Oaks and disperse across the range.
Dozens of buried buckets and other kinds of humane traps are scattered across the mountains, most of them set far enough back from hiking trails and dusty fire roads that nobody would notice. Each morning, the interns set about seeing whats gotten caught in those traps since they were emptied the previous morning. While interns come and go every six months or so, the park service has conducted this long-term monitoring effort for nearly seventeen years, since 2000.
Seana Leary inspects a trap site. | Photo: Jason Goldman
NPS wildlife ecologist Katy Delaney, who oversees the study, says that the goal is to see what we have, where we have it, and how the populations are doing. Each animal caught in the buckets - not just the lizards and snakes, but also small mammals like shrews and bugs like scorpions - gets recorded on an iPad. The data, which includes the length and weight of the animals, allows researchers to learn not just which animals live in which places, but also how their populations have grown and shrunk over time, something only a long-term study like this one can accomplish.
As far as the more immediate, practical, day-to-day reptile-related concerns that most hikers have, take note: on this random Tuesday in August, Leary pulled side blotched lizards, western fence lizards, and whiptail lizards out of the traps shed been assigned to monitor, most of them babies, plus a peculiarly sluggish striped racer, a few shrews, lots of beetles, some centipedes, way too many scorpions, and one tarantula. In four months of daily monitoring, she says, shes never even seen a rattlesnake, the only dangerously venomous snake to slither these canyons and hilltops. Its not that theyre not present; of course they are. But theyre usually clever enough to avoid people, including, it seems, at least one curious herpetologist-in-training.
Not everything that finds its way into the traps is a reptile. Above: desert shrew. Below: Seana Leary makes friends with a tarantula. | Photos: Jason Goldman
The last seventeen years have provided an incredible glimpse into the triumphs and struggles that wild animals endure as they make a home for themselves in as strange a landscape as the Santa Monica Mountains, beyond the harassment that harmless snakes get due to our overwhelming fear of the legless critters.
Our park is so weird, says Delaney. The Santa Monica Mountains are like a patchwork quilt of land scraps, administered in some spots by the National Park Service, and in others by state, city, or county governments. And some properties are privately owned. The mountains are bounded on two sides by freeways, on the third by the Pacific, and on the fourth by agricultural fields. Yosemite or Yellowstone this is not.
While some of the pitfall arrays are set in the wilder parts of the park, others are located in more curious spots. A couple are just steps away from the US-101, one of the worlds busiest highways. Another is inside a botanical garden. If theres any park that can demonstrate the ways in which wildlife can survive and even thrive in highly disturbed urban environments, this is it.
Its this blend of developed and wild that allows Delaney to do more with her data than simply keep tabs on the wild reptiles that call Los Angeles home. Because we have all this habitat fragmentation, she says, we can look at variables [like] nearness to roads or the size of the habitat patch. How much nearby vegetation does a snake or a lizard need to be happy, and does it matter what kind? Does the presence or absence of a permanent water source affect the abundance or distribution of a species?
And because the interns also collect small biological samples from the animals, Delaney and her colleagues can monitor the flow of genes through a population. Are the lizards in one canyon mating with those in the next canyon over, or are they genetically isolated? If theres no gene flow (and there should be), what is stopping the animals from moving around?
She woke up like this: a side-blotched lizard caught in mid-shed. | Photo: Jason Goldman
But the last seventeen years have also provided Delaney with two unique points of interest. The first was the Springs Fire, which burned from the 101 freeway near Camarillo all the way to the ocean in May 2013. Since firefighting efforts are typically directed at saving the lives of people and structures, fires are usually allowed to burn through wildlands like Point Mugu.
That allowed Delaney a unique glimpse into how a community of animals can recover after a major, acute trauma like a fire, followed by the ongoing, chronic trauma of drought. It burned in May, then it rained, and then there were a bunch of mudslides. And then there was a drought, she says.
Its still tough to say just what all this has meant for reptiles, in part because were still stuck in the fifth year of that ongoing drought, and in part because the pitfall arrays were only deployed in the fire-affected part of P
Most recent headlines
04/08/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, is excited to announce Santiago Solanas as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO)....
03/06/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, a...
28/04/2024
Mediahaus delivers the first SRT live-streaming sports production over 5G with U...
19/04/2024
Thank You for visiting us at NAB 2024!
Thank you for joining us at the ToolsOnAir booth during NAB Show 2024!
We were delighted to showcase our latest inno...
19/04/2024
PARK CITY, UTAH - JANUARY 18: (L-R) John Early and Theda Hammel attend the 2024 Sundance Film Festival Stress Positions premiere at Library Center Theatre on ...
19/04/2024
By Lucy Spicer
One of the most exciting things about the Sundance Film Festival...
19/04/2024
Pictured: Midnight Family
By Stephanie Ornelas
A great way to get to know a city as culturally unique and rich as Mexico City is to listen to the stories tol...
19/04/2024
St. Louis, MO - April 18, 2024 - Studio Network Solutions (SNS) announced today that MOD won three prestigious industry awards at NAB Show 2024 held this week i...
19/04/2024
Spotify's mission is to unlock the potential of human creativity by giving a million artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the ...
19/04/2024
It's a beautiful day to be a Swiftie. Today, Taylor Swift dropped her 11th s...
19/04/2024
MELBOURNE, Fla., April 19, 2024 - The Board of Directors of L3Harris Technologies (NYSE:LHX) declared a quarterly cash dividend of $1.16 per common share, payab...
19/04/2024
PARIS Intel has announced that its plans for the Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris 2024 will include using artificial intelligence technology powered by Intel ...
19/04/2024
LAS VEGAS Technologists working on all aspects of the 8K media production chain offered an optimistic update at the 2024 NAB Show on the state of 8K in video pr...
19/04/2024
OpenDrives New Software-Defined Platform Atlas Wins 2024 NAB Show Product of the...
19/04/2024
Grass Valley Showcases Next-Generation T3 Series 4K/HD Digital Recording and Pla...
19/04/2024
NiTRo's M-CUBE Studio Levels Up Esports Productions with AJA Gear
Brie Clayton April 19, 2024
0 Comments
Esports' rapid rise to popularity can...
19/04/2024
Blackmagic Design Announces DaVinci Resolve 19
Brie Clayton April 19, 2024
0 Comments
Major update adds new DaVinci Neural Engine AI tools, new color ...
19/04/2024
Sony Pictures Entertainment is reportedly in talks with Apollo Global Management to make a bid to acquire Paramount which itself is currently discussing a merge...
19/04/2024
Simon Wilkinson, head of VFX at 1185 films, talks about the technology behind the newly-released horror
By Matthew Corrigan
Published: April 19, 2024
Simo...
19/04/2024
The global electronics company is said to be considering joining forces with investment firm Apollo Management to bid for Paramount Global
By Jenny Priestley
...
19/04/2024
The report broke the economic footprint of EBU member sports broadcasting into three main areas
By Matthew Corrigan
Published: April 19, 2024
The report b...
19/04/2024
CBS Stations has launched CBS News California Investigates , with Julie Watts named regional CBS California correspondent. She will uncover and raise awarenes...
19/04/2024
MediaCo Holding, which owns radio stations WQHT (Hot 97) and WBLS in New York, said it acquired Estrella Media's Spanish-language video, audio and digital c...
19/04/2024
Netflix has ordered season five of fantasy drama The Witcher, which will be the final season. Production has recently begun on season four, and the two remainin...
19/04/2024
DirecTV Stream said it added eight more The CW affiliates to its lineup on Thursday....
19/04/2024
CBS has renewed Elsbeth for the 2024-2025 season. The drama, with Carrie Preston in the lead role, debuted February 29....
19/04/2024
With the Bears picking first, NBCUniversal Local's properties in Chicago plan extensive coverage of the NFL draft next week....
19/04/2024
PHILADELPHIA As government subsidies for broadband services come to an end, Comcast has launched NOW, a new product portfolio of lower-cost Internet, mobile and...
19/04/2024
DirecTV Stream has added more local CW stations for its streaming customers in Boston, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Hartford-New Haven Conn., Phoenix, San ...
19/04/2024
NEW YORK & LOS ANGELES MediaCo Holding Inc. has announced that it has acquired all of Estrella Media's network, content, digital, and commercial operations....
19/04/2024
SAN JOSE, Calif. Adobe has announced that the all-new Adobe Express mobile app is available to all users, bringing features powered by Adobe Firefly generative ...
19/04/2024
LOS GATOS, Calif. Netflix reported another blockbuster quarter by adding 9.33 million new subscribers in Q1, 2024 as global paid memberships hit 269.6 million, ...
19/04/2024
The Current State of the Industry and the Future Impact of AI
Hillary Lewis April 18, 2024
0 Comments
The Entertainment Industry: How did we get here ...
19/04/2024
After Effects Tutorial Text Blur Reveal
Andy Ford April 18, 2024
0 Comments
Here's a way to do a quick blur reveal for your text layer. Start by...
19/04/2024
Hollyland Mars M1 Enhanced Wireless Transmitter / Receiver
Colin Smith April 18, 2024
0 Comments
This tutorial shows the new wireless transmitter rece...
19/04/2024
Resolve Fusion: Writing Expressions with Lua
Simon Ubsdell April 18, 2024
0 Comments
The answer to the very frequently-asked question: what is the pro...
19/04/2024
B+C and Next TV have announced the winners of Best of Show Awards for the 2024 NAB Show. The awards were judged by a panel of industry experts at the convention...
19/04/2024
Cate Blanchett narrates the Netflix series Our Living World, which premieres April 17. The four-part series looks at the extraordinary creatures around the glob...
19/04/2024
Apple TV Plus has a spinoff of For All Mankind in the works. It is called Star City and details the cosmonauts, engineers and intelligence officers working behi...
19/04/2024
Jacquie Walker, longtime anchor at WIVB Buffalo, will step down from the anchor desk. She has spent over 40 years at WIVB and her last day as an anchor is May 2...
19/04/2024
Bob Hearts Abishola will premiere in broadcast syndication this fall on such station groups as Nexstar Media Group, Sinclair, Hearst Television, Tegna, E.W. Scr...
19/04/2024
Live With Kelly and Mark remains TV's top entertainment talk show as Kelly Ripa and her co-host and husband Mark Consuelo celebrate their one-year anniversa...
19/04/2024
Sean McLaughlin has been named VP of news for Graham Media Group. He had been senior VP of local news at E.W. Scripps. He will will be responsible for developi...
19/04/2024
Netflix has shared the first trailer from One Hundred Years of Solitude, a series based on the esteemed novel by Gabriel Garc a M rquez. The streamer is on boar...
19/04/2024
NAB 2024 in Review: West Hall - SportsTech Buzz From AWS, Appear, Ateme, The Swi...
19/04/2024
NAB 2024 Draws 61,000+ Attendees With More Than Half Attending the Show for the ...
19/04/2024
Rohde & Schwarz and VIAVI support European OTIC in Berlin for O-RAN conformance ...
19/04/2024
Wuppertal April 19, 2024
Riedel launches Bolero Connect for seamless integration with PunQtum A pioneer in the field of digital intercom, Riedel has recently ...
Coastal western whiptail lizard | Photo: Jason Goldman 
