The California Fish and Game Commission on Thursday voted unanimously to extend legal protection to mountain lions under the state's Endangered Species Act.

“This is a historic moment for California’s big cats and rich biodiversity. These ecosystem engineers face huge threats that could wipe out key populations," Center for Biological Diversity biologist Tiffany Yap said in a statement praising the decision.

In June 2019, the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental advocacy group, petitioned the state to protect six populations of mountain lions along the Central Coast and in Southern California. The request cited research showing there were only between 255 and 510 mountain lions left in the area.

In February, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife informed the commission that it was recommending the species as a candidate for an endangered listing.

Thursday's vote gives mountain lions a higher level of legal protection for the next 12 months. In a year, the department and commission will reevaluate the petition and decide whether to ultimately list the species as "endangered."

At the hearing, several local politicians also spoke in favor of these additional protections. Assemblymember Richard Bloom, a Democrat from Santa Monica, said that the decision "cannot come soon enough" as mountain lion populations continue to decline.

“The urgency of the threats to our mountain lions, though, demands that we do more to protect them now," he said.

Among the six populations named in the petition are groups of the predators that roam the San Bernardino and San Gabriel mountains.

While hunting the animals for sport was banned in 1990 via the California Wildlife Protection Act, environmental groups argue that habitat fragmentation and depredation kills continue to threaten the species.

Conferring greater protections to mountain lions has wide support from the public, but several business and hunting organizations oppose it.

The Department of Fish and Wildlife received thousands of public comments in support, dwarfing the opposition. Environmental groups and animal advocates including the Humane Society, the Mojave Desert Land Trust and the Mountain Lion Foundation were also in favor.

Several groups representing hunters and ranchers joined Thursday's teleconference to urge the commission to vote against the petition. They argued, in part, that the department and the commission did not have legal authority to list the species as endangered due to language in the same proposition that ended sport hunting in 1990.

In a letter opposing the listing, a member of the public, Wendy Tochihara, wrote that the mountain lion already enjoyed legal protection via other means and that "the Center for Biodiversity is using emotion not science."

Numerous fights over endangered species

Listing species under the federal Endangered Species Act or related state-level legislation usually comes with a fight, as the heightened degree of legal protection makes it much more difficult to obtain permits needed to develop land that also serves as habitat.

At the Thursday meeting, the commission received additional information from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife on several other proposed listings. Among those was the western Joshua tree, one of two species of the iconic desert plant.

The commission officially received the department's recommendation to advance a petition to extend endangered species listing to the plant species. The commission is expected to vote on the request, also lodged by the Center for Biological Diversity, at its June meeting. An affirmative vote would grant the tree protection for the next year while its candidacy is evaluated.

If the commission ultimately approves the petition, it could set a regulatory precedent as the first time protection under the state act was granted to a species whose primary threat was climate change.

And nationally, a coalition of environmental groups on Wednesday represented by Earthjustice notified the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of its intent to sue after the government declined to protect the California spotted owl under the federal act.

"Human activities such as logging, fire suppression, and urbanization have profoundly altered the landscape throughout the California spotted owl’s historical range and drastically reduced the amount of suitable habitat available to the owl," the environmental groups wrote in their letter.

Mark Olalde covers the environment for The Desert Sun. Get in touch at molalde@gannett.com, and follow him on Twitter at @MarkOlalde.