It’s 8:30 a.m. and biologist Joanne Moriarty is heading out on an early morning mission: To try and locate two bobcats living in the Santa Monica Mountains.

“So we will first just drive around and listen for a signal,” she explains, “and hopefully pick up one of our animals.”

She actually located both animals the day before, but couldn’t get close enough to the male to download any data from his collar.  She’s back out for another try.

Meanwhile, north of us, her intern Mason Dubois is in the Simi Hills, looking for the other pair of bobcats in the study. There’s one male up there that they haven’t been able to get a good read on since the fire but she’s trying not to think the worst.

“It’s a little early to be totally worried. There are areas we haven’t been able to access yet.”

“We got great news!” Moriarty says. “It sounds like Mason has potentially found our missing male.”

We meet Dubois in the Simi Hills where a homeowner has let him onto her property. 

And there it is….the signal they’ve been waiting for.

Dubois says he was ecstatic when he first heard it because earlier they had picked up a different sound – the mortality signal – which the collar emits if the cat hasn’t moved in several hours. Now the animal was even close enough for Dubois to be able to download the data from his collar.

“That will tell us exactly where it’s been,” the intern explains.

But what it doesn’t tell them is how the animal is doing and since they keep their distance from the animals they track and avoid interacting with them, that can be difficult to know.  He could be hurt. Or sick. And even if he survived the fire, he’s not out of the woods yet. 

“Is there going to be enough prey out there for them to capture?” Moriarty wonders. “Is there going to be enough cover for them to hide from potential danger?”

So while she’s relieved to know all four bobcats survived the fire, the question remains, can they survive in their new, altered environment.  And that only time will tell.