Alys Granados is one of Conservation Nation’s 2023 conservationist grant winners. Her conservation experience has taken her around the world, from North America to Borneo, and has led her to working with animals including great apes and big cats.
Alys received her MSc in biology at Montreal’s Concordia University, focusing on the human-elephant conflict in Cameroon. She also earned a PhD in zoology at the University of British Columbia, where she used camera traps to measure the effects of logging and hunting on rainforest mammals. After completing her postdoctorate, she joined the Felidae Conservation Fund as a wildlife ecologist in late 2021, and now works with the Fundacion Naturaleza in El Salvador to bring awareness to the country’s threatened wild felids.
Identifying Hotspots & Barriers for Mountain Lions & Implications for Human-Wildlife Conflict
Alys’ project will focus on the puma, the only remaining apex predator in the western United States. While large carnivores like the puma are critical for ecosystem health, habitat disturbance puts them at risk and can lead to human-wildlife conflict. Additionally, puma populations are isolated and scattered, which hurts genetic diversity.
Though those issues are known, the consequences are unclear, especially for puma habitats along the edge of urban areas. Alys aims to learn more about puma habitat and population health by installing camera traps and utilizing scat surveys. These methods will identify puma habitats in the north San Francisco Bay Area, as well as measure the level of toxins, stress and parasites that the cats experience.
Alys’ project will also identify puma chokepoints and provide recommendations for linking their habitats, while offering ways — via seminars and student outreach efforts — to decrease human-wildlife conflict. In the end, Alys’ goal is to contribute to the persistence of the puma in the Bay Area.
