Cougar Numbers Increasing Across the United States

[Emily]

http://www.outdoorhub.com/news/cougar-n ... 2012+A+New

Cougar Numbers Increasing Across the United States
by Outdoor Hub Reporters on June 14, 2012
submitted by: Agnieszka Spieszny
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After nearly a century of decline, the North American cougar (sometimes referred to as the mountain lion) population is making such a strong comeback that some are spilling over into human inhabited areas.

Michelle LaRue of the University of Minnesota co-wrote a paper on the cougar population in the Journal of Wildlife Management. She said many cougars are moving eastward as the population grows. Cougars are inherently solitary and they like remote rugged wilderness areas, but because of their territorial instincts, they are forced to conquer new ground, moving out of their “homelands” in the Great Plains and west to the midwest and further east.

“What’s happening is that, as the young males are moving out of the areas they were born in, they are coming into contact with other young males,” LaRue said. “They don’t have anywhere else to go so they’re kind of being forced out of these western populations and into these areas of vacant habitats in the midwest.”

For some time, their habitat was restricted to the Black Hills of South Dakota and were seen as a threat to livestock and humans in many states. Then in the 1960s and 1970s, numbers bounced back a bit and the animal was reclassified as a managed game species as the population continued to grow. Despite this, the eastern cougar, a highly debated “subspecies”, was declared extinct by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in March of 2011.

In the 1990s, the animal started to spread further and further. Some of the high profile evidence for this movement was when a young male cougar was hit and killed by a car in Connecticut last June. Genetic analysis revealed that the animal had originated in the Black Hills, which means he traveled approximately 1,800 miles (2,900 km) through a number of states before his death.

Aiding to the rise in their population is the reintroduction of its sources of prey, such as elk and mule deer. Conservation efforts for the ungulates has helped the cougar bounce back to a total population of about 30,000.

Many researchers voiced their concerns about the dangers of encountering humans, although they say cougars are fleeting animals who don’t like humans. They have stated that there should be no fear that they will develop a dependance on picking through trash like some bears have be known to do.

Image from Mike Fisher, BFS Man on flickr
Any views or opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect those of Outdoor Hub. Comments on this article reflect the sole opinions of their writers.

[Emily]

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 6/abstract
Keywords:
cougar;dispersal;Midwest;Puma concolor;recolonization
Abstract
Although cougars (Puma concolor) were extirpated from much of midwestern North America around 1900, hard evidence of cougar presence has increased and populations have become established in the upper portions of the Midwest during the past 20 years. Recent occurrences of cougars in the Midwest are likely due to dispersal of subadult cougars into the region from established western populations, and may be indicative of further recolonization and range expansion. We compiled confirmed locations of cougars (i.e., via carcasses, tracks, photos, video, and DNA evidence) collected during 1990–2008 in 14 states and provinces of midwestern North America. We separated our study area into 2 regions (east and west), calculated number and types of confirmations, and assessed trends in confirmations during the study period. We recorded 178 cougar confirmations in the Midwest and the number of confirmations increased during the study period (r = 0.79, P ≤ 0.001). Confirmations by state or province ranged from 1 (Kansas, Michigan, and Ontario) to 67 (Nebraska). Carcasses were the most prevalent confirmation type (n = 56). Seventy-six percent of known-sex carcass confirmations were males, consistent with predominantly male-biased dispersal in cougars. More confirmations (P = 0.05) were recorded in the western region than the eastern region . Seventy-nine percent of cougar confirmations occurred within 50 km of highly suitable habitat (i.e., forest areas with steep terrain and low road and human densities). Given the number of cougar confirmations, the increasing frequency of occurrences, and that long-distance dispersal has been documented via radiocollared individuals, our research suggests that cougars are continuing to recolonize midwestern North America. © 2012 The Wildlife Society.

[old timer]

I would like to know how Michelle LaRue and who ever else was involved came up with a pop, of 30.000 cats. Mt. has no Idea how many cats it has, let alone sombody from Minnesota. Just curious, thanks.

[come-hunt]

A few years agoI had a deer count survey done on a ranch I had leased here in Texas. I went along on the this survey , that was run at night with the aid of a spotlight. We made a 11 mile circuit and did not see one deer. When I got the results back from the TPWD it was relayed to me and confirmed that I had one (1) deer to every 46 acres. LOL! In other words it was a WAG. I would imagine that the 30,000 cougar count was a WAG. Same as the enemy body counts were in Viet Nam.