Study Spotlight: Are Mountain Lions Impacted by Texas’ Border Wall?

The purpose of the wall is to keep humans out, but what if I were to tell you that humans are not the only living things impacted by it's construction?

Got the Mountain Lion Blues

According to research from the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute (CKWRI) in Kingsville, TX, mountain lions are feared to be affected by the growing border wall in Texas.

Colleen Schreiber, a publisher for Livestock Weekly, says that mountain lions do have protections under U.S. game laws, and there is even a 36-hour trap check for all landowners with known pumas on their property.

This is all well and good, Schreiber notes, but the big cats are still "being impacted by border security activities."

The portion of Texas at which the studies have been conducted include nearly 932 miles of border land between South Texas and Mexico with an additional 375,000 acres of private land.

This is an ongoing study, and researchers are utilizing various methods of observation, including camera traps that are strategically spaced about five miles apart from one another to capture the roaming activity of the mountain lions.

So far, 150 cameras have been set up and researchers have tagged two male lions while tissue samples from 10 others have also been collected.

One big cat researcher, Dr. Lisanne Petracca, stated that their main goal is to discover if Texas mountain lions are traveling the length of the wall in order to cross, or if they are just "bouncing off."

Researchers in Texas have collaborated with Mexican groups that are are more than willing to assist in trapping and acquiring tissue samples in order to better understand how impacted these mountain lions truly are by the Texas-Mexico border wall.