Alamo • Danville • Blackhawk • Diablo • San Ramon
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Look inside for the latest Regional in Nature Activity Guide!
October 2014
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SPOTLIGHT
Rotary Club of Alamo Immediate Past President, Steve Collins, (L), presents the award to Stan Hitomi, 2014 Alamo Citizen of the Year.
At the 32nd Annual Alamo Music and Wine Festival held on Saturday, September 6th, the Rotary Club of Alamo named Stan Hitomi, principal of Alamo Elementary School, as the 2014 Alamo Citizen of the Year. In addition to being recognized by the Rotary Club of Alamo, Stan also received certificates of appreciation from representatives of Senator Mark DeSaulnier; Assemblymember Joan Buchanan; and Contra Costa County Supervisor Candace Andersen. “This is the 30th year that the Rotary Club
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The Farmers Markets and local supermarkets dazzle with beautiful squashes and fruits to cook and to decorate your home. The season has officially kicked off, and there is no season quite like this. Fall harvest’s fruits and vegetables will delight in reds, oranges, yellow and cream, with stripes, splashes and plenty of texture. Root vegetables, pears, apples, pomegranates and persimmons will excite your inner cook and designer! The Danville Farmers Market takes place every Saturday rain or shine in the Museum of the San Ramon Valley parking lot on Railroad Avenue and Prospect from 9am to 1pm.
The truth about mountain lions By James Hale
Mountain lion ancestors originated in North America around 10 million years ago from the ancestral stock of Saber-toothed Cats (Smilodon fatalis) and Scimitar Cat (Homotherium serum) which originated around 25 million years ago. The Saber-toothed cats lived between 2.5 million years ago to 10,000 years ago.The mountain lion lineage branched off around 1 million years ago. The two species of saber tooth cats, as well as the North American Cheetah (Miracinonyx trumani)and the North American Lion (Panthera atrox) were extirpated in North America around 10,000 years ago, starting with the Younger Dryas Cold Spell or Big Freeze (12,800 - 11,500 Before Present) during the end of the Pleistocene Epoch (2,588,000 - 11,700 million years ago). Climate change at the end of the Pleistocene and perhaps overexploitation by the PaleoIndians led to the extinction
of the Megafauna. Mountain lion populations flourished thereafter. Mountain lions (Puma concolor) are presently the only large, obligate carnivore thriving in self-sustaining populations across western North America. The species has existed here along with its major prey - Mule Deer ( Odocoileus hemionus), White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus), Elk (Cervus elaphus), Moose (Alces alces), and Bighorn Sheep (Ovis canadensis) - for at least 13,000 years. Ecologically, mountain lions strongly influence energy flow in ecosystems, are a potent selective force on prey animals, modulate prey population dynamics, indirectly affect herbivory in plant communities, influence competitive interactions
between herbivores, and compete with other carnivores for prey. Moreover, because self-sustaining mountain lion populations require expansive, interconnected wild land, conservation strategies designed to benefit mountain lions also benefit an array of other wildlife. Unregulated mountain lion hunting and habitat alterations that affected prey numbers, caused the near extinction of the mountain lion in eastern North America. By 1900, mountain lions had largely been extirpated east of the Rocky Mountains, with the exception of Florida. Through the first half of the 20th century, management emphasized preemptive eradication. Bounties were paid as an incentive to remove mountain lions for protection of wild ungulates and domestic livestock. The payments were significant for
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the time. In the 1920’s, California paid bounties of $30 for a female mountain lion and $20 for a male. Bounties continued to be paid throughout the western states into the 1960’s, when mountain lion management shifted to a brief non-bountied but non-protected status. Coincident with the abolishment of bounties, depredation policies became less preemptive and more reactive,
Mind & Body Awareness page 7 Fall Home & Garden pages 8-9
See LIONS page 4