Oct. 30th 2007 was like any other day for Eric York, a wildlife biologist at Grand Canyon National Park. He rose in the late autumn darkness, gathered his field gear and negotiated the rugged Kaibab limestone cliffs to check his snares and look for fresh mountain lion kill sites.
That morning he received a mortality signal indicating that P13 (the 13th puma in the study) had not moved for 24 hours. He located her limp body in an alcove just below the rim. She had a bloody nose and no obvious signs of trauma. Eric was driven to understand the cats he followed—how they lived and why they died. He hefted the 80-pound animal out of the canyon and performed a thorough examination in his garage. He found teeth marks in her neck; several puncture wounds in her abdomen and massive internal bleeding.
Eric was world renowned, from Nepal to California, for his skill tracking animals ranging from bobcats to snow leopards. Once he captured a lion, he would tranquilize it and attach a radio collar equipped with a global positioning system unit to enable him to follow the animal’s movements.
In July, Eric interpreted from P13’s movement patterns that she was caring for a litter, and using the data from the collar, located the den and tagged her three kittens. Now the orphaned litter, too young to care for themselves, was doomed.
Three days later Eric was found dead in his house by a coworker. He died from pneumonic plague that he contracted from P13. Eric’s presence came to me strongly the other day. Maybe it was the season of All Souls Day and el Dia de Los Muertos, where the thin veil that separates us from the spirit world falls away. But I am also haunted by the legacy of his research and the fate of the lions he studied.
I worked with Eric at the Grand Canyon, but I hardly knew him. He was elusive like the cats he tracked, yet he radiated an infectious excitement and passion for his work. We all had an open invitation to join him in the field. He shot videos of his captures, and invited people over to watch with him, to share in his awe for these large predators.
I admired him most for his commitment to educate the public about mountain lions. He implored us to care on a deeper level. He could not remain detached from the cold reality the human world imposes on the natural one he loved.
When P8 was killed by an SUV along the road to Desert View, he sent an e-mail message out to all employees at Grand Canyon, including the superintendent, the maintenance workers and rangers alike, because he believed all of us have a part in changing the status quo. He attached two photos; one of the male lion the day he was trapped, standing behind a big boulder, ears back staring intently at the camera, the shadows of the canyon in the distance. The second photo pictured the same cat lifeless and bloody next to the road. That lion’s face came to life, staring back at you from the screen. You couldn’t deny the tragedy that he was taken at the height of his virility.
In the three years Eric tracked the mountain lions of Grand Canyon, four of the eight cats in the study died, all from human causes. Hunters legally killed two of them on nearby Forest Service lands and cars hit the others. Although all of the animals came within a half mile of the developed areas of the park, there were no human interactions with the lions during the study except at the time of their deaths.
Mountain lions are large predators and they need space. But Eric’s research shows us that even the 1.2 million-acre expanse of the Grand Canyon is not enough to provide refuge from the threat of human beings—that to a certain extent we live our lives at the expense of other species. I hope we can honor the legacy of Eric’s research by changing human patterns so we can coexist with large predators.
