Cougars on the Move
Mountain lions are thought to be multiplying in the West and heading east. Can we learn to live with these beautiful, elusive creatures?
- By Steve Kemper
- Smithsonian magazine, September 2006, Subscribe
Cougars are so stealthy and seldom seen that no one has a fix on how many there are in the wild. "We're studying a phantom in the mountains," says Logan (trying to pick up a signal from a radio-collared cougar along Colorado's Uncompahgre Plateau). Michael S. Lewis
Standing on the lip of a steep cliff on the Uncompahgre Plateau in western Colorado, Ken Logan rotates a telemetry antenna to pinpoint the radio signal of a female cougar designated F-7. He wants to tag F-7's cubs, which she has stashed in a jumble of rocks on the mountainside below. But she won't leave them, and Logan is wary. In 25 years of studying cougars, he and his team have had about 300 "encounters" and have been challenged six times. "And five of the six times," he says, "it was a mother with cubs. So what we don't want today is mom there with her cubs behind her."
Logan is at the beginning of a ten-year, $2 million study of mountain lions on 800 square miles. This native American lion—also called cougar, catamount, panther and puma—is the world's fourth largest cat. It ranges more widely throughout the Americas than any mammal except human beings. There's a lot at stake for cougars throughout the West, where beliefs about the cat are more often rooted in politics, emotion and guesswork than in hard facts. The animals are so elusive that no one knows for certain how many exist. "We're studying a phantom in the mountains," says Logan.
Are cougars destructive, overabundant predators that kill livestock and deer (robbing hunters of that opportunity), or splendid, overhunted icons that deserve protection? And how dangerous are they to people? Fatal attacks in the United States and Canada are rare—21 in the past 115 years—but 11 have happened since 1990.
In 1990, Californians voted to outlaw hunting cougars entirely. But most Western wildlife agencies have gone in the other direction in the past few decades, increasing the number that could be killed annually. In 1982, hunters in ten Western states killed 931 cougars, and by the early 2000s the number was topping 3,000. The number of hunting permits surged between the late 1990s and early 2000s after many states either expanded the season for lions, lowered the cost of licenses, raised bag limits—or all three. In Texas, Logan's home state, cougars—even cubs—can be killed year-round without limit.
Because it's so hard for wildlife agencies to get accurate counts of cougars, Logan and Linda Sweanor (Logan's spouse and fellow biologist) devised a conservative strategy for managing them by dividing a state into different zones: for sport hunting, for controlled killing in areas crowded with people or livestock, and for cougar refuges, which Logan calls "biological savings accounts." Many of the country's cougar experts have recommended that wildlife agencies adopt such zone management.
That hasn't happened. "Other political interests came to bear," Logan says dryly, referring mostly to ranchers and hunters. "At least the science is there now. I think policymakers and managers will go back to it, because management based on politics is going to fail."
Abstract of an article by Steve Kemper, originally published in the September 2006 issue of SMITHSONIAN. All rights reserved.
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Comments (5)
Theres alway negative comments on websites and I enjoyed reading this lots of good info thank you and right more on cougar puma ext thanks so much and william shipmane. thanks again
Love,
Alanna
Posted by Alanna Love on May 11,2011 | 06:28 PM
It's sad that someone can be so hateful of non-human beings. I live on the Uncompahgre Plateau, with cougars, coyotes, golden eagles, elk, deer, ... and sheep, horses, and cattle. I know that cougars hunt my property because my dogs find deer carcasses covered in leaves. They also find tremendous delight in the leftover bones. My home has existed here since 1978, but many people who live in the west have moved into new residential housing tracts placed smack dab in the middle of cougar territory, placed there through shoddy environmental impact statements done by less than honest EIS companies that know they can get away with simply neglecting to mention which territory predatory, threatened, and endangered animals live, hunt and breed in. Rampant human corruption and greed are to blame for the recent human deaths through cougar attacks, not cougars.
Posted by E. Anglin on June 24,2010 | 02:12 AM
I am sure the family members of the 4 people who have been attacked by cougars this year in their own neighborhoods will agree with you. Especially the ones who were killed and eaten. Predators have to be managed and made afraid of humans to keep them at a safe distance. In Colorado they come up onto the porches in neighborhoods. See http://www.9news.com/news/watercooler/article.aspx?storyid=128823&catid=337
Black Bears are taking over New Jersey neighborhoods and 3.5 million 800 lb feral pigs are destroying pasture lands, farms and attacking people in their own homes. Animal rights zealots don't understand that these animals breed large litters and the populations double each year. Soon wild horses, feral pigs, cougars, wolves, let alone deer, rats and mice will have damaged the ecosystem for all other animals. The killing of human beings by wolves, cougars, bears and pigs is rapidly increasing. If you don't manage the wildlife then it destroys its own habitat and humans. Oh, I forgot that is what earth first wants no more human beings.
Posted by Dr. Rosset on December 15,2009 | 03:53 PM
I go with California*. I think these magnificant* cats should* be protected.
Posted by william shipmane 2 on October 25,2009 | 11:34 AM
I go with california. I think these magnifacent cats sahould be protected.
Posted by william shipmane on April 6,2009 | 02:48 PM