Guest Commentary by Ann McCreary, Methow Valley News
In this reposting of a Methow Valley News article, journalist Ann McCreary discusses the latest cougar research in Washington and how it’s reshaping management of this often misunderstood cat. Biologists are learning that killing more mountain lions can increase conflicts with people. The long-ignored social structure and territorial habits of lions are key factors. Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists are striving for a more science-based approached to creating lion policies in the state.
This cougar was trapped and relocated after killing an alpaca on Libby Creek several years ago. Methow Valley News file photo by Sue Misao.
The social behavior of cougars, studied for more than a decade by a team of state biologists, is the basis for a new approach to managing the big cats in Washington.
The research has revealed that cougar populations are naturally self-controlling because cougars are extremely territorial. Taking that into consideration, state wildlife officials are implementing an innovative hunting and management strategy that is generating widespread interest from wildlife managers and biologists.
“The concept of thinking about cougars’ social system and how they interact, in terms of management, is something that has never been done before,” said Rich Beausoleil, cougar and bear specialist for Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Over a 13-year period, Beausoleil led three of six cougar research projects in Washington, including Okanogan County, and is the lead author on a scientific article to be published this fall or winter in the Wildlife Society Bulletin. The research project also studied cougar populations near Issaquah, Cle Elum, Kettle Falls, Republic and the Blue Mountains.
The peer-reviewed article, called “Research to Regulation: Cougar Social Behavior as a Guide for Management,” describes an approach to managing cougars “founded on their behavior and social organization… that should promote population stability.”
Although the article has not appeared in print yet, Beausoleil said he’s receiving calls from wildlife biologists and policy makers who have heard about his research and are interested in learning more.
“This is pretty groundbreaking stuff, and it’s going to generate quite a bit of discussion in the scientific community,” Beausoleil said in an interview Monday (July 29). “Folks from around the U.S. have contacted me, a researcher from Sweden, and most recently a reporter from National Geographic.”
Science-based Strategy
The goal of the research — one of the longest-running studies of cougars ever conducted — is to develop a management strategy that is based on science, rather than politics, as it has often been in the past, Beausoleil said.
A ban on using dogs for hunting cougars approved by Washington voters in 1996 prompted the introduction of 16 legislative bills addressing cougar management over the past 15 years.
The basic idea of the state’s new management approach, Beausoleil said, is based on cougars’ social system and territorial nature. Adult cougars, especially males, have a natural drive to establish, patrol and defend a territory. If another cougar enters that territory, the cougar will fight to the death to defend it.
“The No. 1 cause of death in the wild is cougars killing cougars,” Beausoleil said. “The strongest ones and the ones with the best genes survive.”
If an adult male cougar dies or is killed — by a hunter, for instance — the territory is left undefended and younger male cougars will move in. Often two or more younger cats enter the territory formerly occupied by a single adult male.
Because cougars don’t develop their territorial instincts until they are about 4 years old, the younger cougars may occupy overlapping ranges for a few years, resulting in a higher local cougar population, and increasing the potential for interactions with livestock and humans.
“One of the reasons cougars may come into conflict with humans is if you take out a territorial male, you have just increased the odds [of cougar encounters]. Instead of one you now have three cougars,” Beausoleil explained.
“If you live in one of those areas where a male was removed, instead of seeing one, now your potential is to see three or four because those animals are too young to defend their home range. Now you’re thinking, ‘Holy smokes, the cougar population really exploded.’ It really hasn’t, it’s a temporary chaotic condition.”
The Wildlife Society article notes that “increased hunting may not always result in reduced local densities of cougars… instead, increased hunting may result in compensatory immigration by mainly young males.”
“If this occurs on a large scale it will take two or three years before the area stabilizes again,” and the younger cougars reach the age where they begin killing each other, Beausoleil said. “We want to try to manage cougars more responsibly and preserve the older age structure that is so important.”
Studying Habits
The concept is not necessarily intuitive, Beausoleil said. He sometimes receives calls from ranchers who report seeing a cougar on their land and want Beausoleil to come kill it.
Rich Beausoleil, cougar and bear specialist for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, discusses the findings of an extensive study of cougar habits during a presentation last winter at the North Cascades Basecamp. Methow Valley News file photo by Don Nelson.
Rich Beausoleil, cougar and bear specialist for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, discusses the findings of an extensive study of cougar habits during a presentation last winter at the North Cascades Basecamp. Methow Valley News file photo by Don Nelson.
“I ask why. And sometimes they say because they’ve seen it every year. I tell them, ‘He’s probably the best insurance you have against potential conflict because he’s keeping all the other cats away. When you have one cougar who knows how to live around people, why take that one out and open it up to two or three males? Let them help you.'”
In stable cougar populations, Beausoleil and other researchers have discovered very predictable densities of 1.7-2.0 adults per 100 square kilometers. In addition, research in Washington found that the cougar population would increase by about 14 percent per year without hunting.
To apply research findings to wildlife policy, Beausoleil and his fellow researchers used satellite telemetry from 117 radio-collared cougars in five study areas in Washington to identify habitats used by the marked cougars. They extrapolated these habitats throughout the state, and did on-the-ground assessments to verify likely habitats.
Past hunting management policies designated large game management units where objectives were to decrease or increase the cougar population. In areas easily accessible to hunters within those management units, greater numbers of cougars were taken, while few were taken in less accessible areas.
Using the habitat information, state wildlife officials last January established smaller “cougar management zones” created to “distribute the harvest more equitably across the landscape… [while] preserving the social stability across the whole state.” Rather than 13 large game management units, the state designated 49 smaller cougar management zones.
The state also established a harvest “threshold” of 14 percent of the estimated population in each cougar management zone, to preserve the stability of the population.
State wildlife officials have also instituted a 24-hour reporting and information hotline, allowing officials to quickly close management zones that reach the harvest threshold.
In addition to distributing the cougar harvest more evenly, smaller management zones provide a benefit to hunters, Beausoleil said. “When one [zone] closes a hunter can go right next door. Hunters are happy because it’s not a giant area that is closing,” he said.
The resulting harvest of 150 cougars last year, Beausoleil said, is “similar to the five-year average,” but distributed more equally across the management zones.
The data-driven approach to cougar management also appeals to the non-hunting public and conservationists, Beausoleil said. “They want to know management is responsible and scientifically credible,” he said. “They want to make sure their dollars are being spent responsibly.”
“A simple, consistent, science-based approach to cougar management,” the Wildlife Society Bulletin article said, “can be of benefit to agencies during intervals of administrative and political uncertainty.”
Beausoleil said the cougar studies may also be relevant to another controversial carnivore in Washington. “These research findings may also be applicable for wolf management in the future, because they’re highly territorial as well,” he said.
Copyright Methow Valley News. Reposted with permission.
Injured, Orphaned Mountain Lion Cubs Survive and Thrive After Donated Flight
Guest Commentary from LightHawk’s April 2012 newsletter
Within twenty-four hours of hearing about two injured, orphaned mountain lion cubs near San Jose, California, a LightHawk volunteer pilot stepped in to provide this heartbreaking story with a happy ending. Nearly everyday in North America LightHawk volunteer pilots, aircrafts and resources are helping to tip the balance toward sustainability for every major environmental issue within their targeted areas of focus.
Alone in the Wild
The soft cries of the 12-week old mountain lion cubs were not bringing their mother running back to them. She had been killed under a California Department of Fish & Game depredation permit after a San Jose area man lost some of his peacocks to the lion.
Two weeks later, an emaciated 7-pound female cub emerged from the brush and attacked the man’s Chihuahua. The flea-bitten cub suffered two broken legs and a broken jaw during the skirmish and was taken by CA Fish & Game to the Folsom City Zoo Sanctuary.
Against All Odds
When the female cub arrived at Folsom Zoo, she could not walk, stand or eat on her own. As it was clear she would need 24-hour care to have even a slim chance of survival, veterinarians considered euthanasia. Folsom Zoo’s Jill Lute stepped in and decided to take the cub home to provide round-the-clock feedings, every two hours. With Lute’s mothering, the cub began to improve slowly.
About a week later another cub (her sibling) was found up a tree at the same location. He was starving, but otherwise uninjured. Once placed in the same room, the cubs started vocalizing to each other throughout the night and by the second day, it was clear they recognized each other and had perked up considerably. The Folsom Zoo staff called the cubs “Cypress” (female) and “Ash” (male) after native trees.
Flight Keeps Brother and Sister Cubs Together
Because the cubs were so bonded and had been through so much, everyone hoped they could stay together, but the zoo was unable to house both cubs. Arizona’s Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center (SWCC) was the only facility in the country that could give the California cubs a home together.
For the past four years SWCC has partnered with LightHawk to transport endangered Mexican wolves. They knew LightHawk’s volunteer pilots were the best bet to move the cubs quickly and safely from California to Arizona. One day after Pacific Program Manager Christine Steele put out the call, Joy Covey, a LightHawk volunteer pilot from Woodside, CA jumped at the opportunity to fly the cubs.
Within the week, she loaded her Pilatus PC-12 single engine turboprop with two crates holding the cubs, and filed a flight plan bound for KSDL Scottsdale, Arizona almost three hours away.
A Smooth Trip
“The LightHawk donated flight moved these mountain lion cubs to their new home without the stress of commercial air travel or a 15-hour drive,” explains Rudy Engholm, LightHawk’s Executive Director. “And the volunteer pilot had the opportunity to make a real difference for some pretty cute passengers.”
The cubs — which can grow to more than 100 pounds as adults — will eventually live in a large enclosure with other mountain lions at Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center when they are completely recovered from their injuries. Southwest Wildlife, located in Scottsdale, Arizona, rescues and rehabilitates wildlife including bears, foxes, bobcats and deer. The Center is able to release back into the wild about 70 percent of all the animals it takes in and provides sanctuary to those animals that cannot be released back to the wild.
Two Happy Tails, In the End
While this story ends with the cubs safe and sound, it speaks to the need to preserve wild spaces and be conscious of the needs of the animals with whom we share the land.
“My son Tyler and I love to help wildlife by donating flights through LightHawk,” says volunteer pilot Joy Covey.
“It’s sad when wildlife and humans have conflict, because it is so often the result of humans expanding into the animals’ habitat. Unfortunately these orphans got caught in the middle. For us to be able to help them have a safe life gives us great joy.”
Thank you to Bev and the entire LightHawk community for allowing the Mountain Lion Foundation to share this story!
Guest Commentary by Rob Klavins, Wildlands and Wildlife Advocate, Oregon Wild
On a recent walk through the Oregon capitol, Rob Klavins notes “just how far we haven’t come” in the last 170 years. Outdated anti-predator views from the early wild west still dominate the wildlife policy making process. Rather than focusing resources on public education or safety, legislators are allowing the state to spend thousands of taxpayer dollars to shoot coyotes from helicopters, reauthorize illegal inhumane hunting practices, and kill federally protected species. Our society is more intelligent than this, or at least shouldn’t we find better things to do with our time?
Oh just how far we haven’t come.
The corridors of Oregon’s capital building are filled with history.
Tom McCall’s portrait is a Technicolor reminder of the beach bill — the landmark law which made our beaches open to all. There’s an exhibit of amazing rocks and minerals found in Oregon. The offices of elected officials are themselves display cases of Oregon treasures past and present.
In a corridor leading to Senate offices are a number of educational displays highlighting the history of the Beaver State. The last in line is a real attention grabber.
The display features the preserved head and skin of a cougar. The text behind the cougar tells the creation story of Oregon’s government. The most prominent words are the title “Wolf Meetings, Genesis of Government” and a quote:
“It is admitted by all, that bears, wolves, panthers, etc., are destructive to useful animals owned by the settlers of this colony…
Minister of the Public Meeting, March 1843, French Prairie.
The text goes on to describe how — in a surprisingly narrow decision — 52 white men voted to form a government, organize a militia, and set the course for what would become the state of Oregon.
It’s a course that has led Oregon to become known around the world as one of America’s greenest, most progressive states. Sadly, my next stop was a disturbing reminder of how — at least when it comes to wildlife — some things haven’t changed.
I walked past the “Wolf Meeting” display, re-read the quote, and rounded the corner into a packed hearing room. At the head of the room was the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee.
Last year, under different leadership, the Committee’s work earned Oregon’s capital national media attention as “the place where wildlife go to die.”
A year later, the day’s agenda included hearings on bills to:
Circumvent a ballot initiative and reinstate the use of hounds to chase, tree, and kill cougars.
Allow people to kill bears that have been drawn in by bait.
Kill a federally protected native bird for eating fish coveted by anglers.
Enshrine recreational hunting, trapping, and fishing as rights in the state Constitution alongside free speech and due process.
Marginalize and exclude the voice of all but the most avid hunters and anglers from having a voice in wildlife management.
I’m no longer an active hunter and my fishing rod only rarely makes the trip from the shed to the car. I’ve got no problem with those who hunt and fish ethically. But somehow the idea of shooting a scared cat in a tree or a bear with his nose deep in a bag of donuts just doesn’t seem all that sporting.
Allowing citizens to kill an endangered species because it may have once spooked a cow would be laughable if it hadn’t passed out of Committee by a 6-1 vote. Marginalizing the voice of the majority of Oregonians who don’t hunt, fish, or put out traps for fun — well, that just seems downright un-American.
Notably, Oregon Wild has taken no stand on the constitutional amendment; however several fishing organizations opposed it in part because it would preclude the public from voting on future conservation initiatives that effect huntable wildlife.
The initiative also begs the question, why not protect the right to go bowling, golfing, surfing, or skeet shooting? Why elevate the rights of hunters and anglers above everyone else? Why not protect the rights of the vast majority of Oregonians who prefer to shoot wildlife with a camera than a rifle?
Like the rest of the country, Oregon is facing serious challenges. Not being able to kill enough wildlife isn’t one of them.
Many of Oregon’s rural areas are struggling mightily. Apparently that’s not the case in Umatilla County where rather than fund education, public safety, or infrastructure, the County Commissioners just approved spending $10,000 of taxpayer money to kill wildlife from helicopters and airplanes. The Palinesque program primarily targets coyotes and ignores the fact that killing coyotes is about the surest way to increase their numbers.
“It is admitted by all, that bears, wolves, panthers, etc., are destructive to useful animals owned by the settlers of this colony…”
That quote from the capital display once seemed antiquated and almost folksy. That was until I realized that for a small minority, not much has changed since 1843. Worse yet, some of our elected leaders seem intent to be willing partners.
04/09/13 A 5-minute video by 64puma64
A family has some unusual guests on their property in northern Washington: a mother mountain lion and her three cubs. A trail camera captures some great footage of the family as the four animals interact with each other.
Guest Commentary by Christopher Spatz, President of the Cougar Rewilding Foundation
Despite cougar biologist John Laundre’s recent study demonstrating abundant available mountain lion habitat in the 6-million acre Adirondack Park of upstate New York, the state Department of Environmental Conservation refuses to acknowledge it. For whatever reason, the agency continues to promote outdated opinions that lions are incapable of reestablishing populations in the eastern United States.
Lion advocate and New York resident Chris Spatz is frustrated, but his (and Laundre’s) Cougar Rewilding Foundation have not given up hope that science will someday be incorporated into management decisions and this important piece of American heritage — the mountain lion — can be restored to eastern landscapes.
Despite the Cougar Rewilding Foundation’s best, peer-reviewed efforts to keep everyone (more than half of our update recipients are academics or resource professionals) honest, we hear this reflexively from eastern game agencies, from state wildlife officials with no alpha predator experience, from biologists without cougar research credentials, that the East is too developed, too populated to support big predators.
“It is unlikely that any eastern state will reintroduce cougars; the required habitat is simply not available.”
Eastern Cougar Fact Sheet, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
Public wildlife servants, those established as authorities by their own departments — both civil and academic — the state experts sought by both media sources and citizens to answer their eastern cougar questions, remain a full generation behind wolf and cougar developments in the field.
It’s certainly not news that a region of mixed forest and farming habitat in northern Minnesota (like New York’s Adirondacks) has coexisted for decades with 3,000 wolves (nearly twice as many at the start of the slaughter in the Northern Rockies after ESA delisting), or that California supports breeding populations of cougars at the very edges of the Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego.
But perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by such institutional senescence when the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s fact sheet on the eastern cougar contains just four citations, all of them from the last century, and then some: one from 1968, two from the 1970s, and the most recent, from 1993 — which is almost funny if it weren’t so negligent (I’ve left messages and written politely to the NYSDEC about their fact sheet; no one has the courtesy to respond).
Nor should we be surprised that two of those four obsolete references are from sportsmen’s guides, examples of what Mountain Lions in America fingers as the “huge conflict of interest” between state game agencies and whom they perceive as their primary constituents, spawning “a kind of self inflicted ignorance of cougar ecology.” When I worked in the psychiatric field, it was my professional responsibility to attend peer conferences and study the developing literature.
A similar professional obligation by eastern state wildlife representatives commenting officially on alpha predators appears not to be a requirement for the job (I’ve heard: “Who has time for research on absent predators amid such budget austerity?” Fair enough. Then don’t comment).
Instead of doing their homework, keeping up with the latest research (research less than two decades old), our civil wildlife servants entrusted with educating the public take the lazy route.
No need to spook hunters with talk of bringing back the “competition,” as if hunters don’t take exponentially more ungulates than big predators, as if predators haven’t coexisted in intimate balance with their prey for eons.
No need to keep up with ecosystem studies, those embattled life-webs missing their native shepherds and left ravaged by state-sponsored mismanagement of eastern state white-tail herds, those systems our public resource managers are hired to protect and preserve — for all.
No need to entertain informed debate on alpha predator recovery in the East, or survey the interest of the taxpayers (which keeps turning up big support for big predator recovery) providing their salaries.
Nope, simply post outdated references to kids Googling their home
work on eastern cougars (most of the traffic to our website is from students; NYSDEC’s fact sheet appears first on search lists), and deny the potential for wolf and cougar recovery in the East out of self-inflicted ignorance.
In the spirit of education and public debate, we offer here three recent sources on the subject of cougar ecology:
Earth Island Journal considers an eastern rewilding of absent megafauna, including cougars.
UC Santa Cruz has a fine site and videos devoted to cougar research along the urban/wild interface of the Bay Area.
C’mon, NYSDEC. Join the 21st century. I’m paying you — $88 for my NYSDEC Super Sportsman’s license, nevermind my taxes — to do your homework.
You owe it to the kids. And, to the cats.
Honestly,
Christopher Spatz, President
Cougar Rewilding Foundation
MORE ABOUT CHRISTOPHER SPATZ
Christopher Spatz is a former psychiatric social worker and a director of the Gunks Climbers’ Coalition.
He writes and lectures about the natural history of the Catskill Mountains and the Shawangunk Ridge where he lives in southern New York State, and where he caught the spell of the fabled eastern cougar.
MORE ABOUT COUGAR REWILDING FOUNDATION
The Cougar Rewilding Foundation (CRF) is a nonprofit whose mission is to facilitate the recovery of the cougar in suitable wild habitat east of the Rocky Mountains. CRF promotes recovery of breeding populations of cougars through natural recolonization and mandated restorations to the central, southeastern and eastern United States, advocating responsible management in habitat where cougars are recovering. CRF also believes in full legal protection of all cougars living wild east of the Rockies, regardless of origin.
To help raise awareness for their cause, the Cougar Rewilding Foundation conducts public education programs by preparing cougar education modules and lesson plans, exhibiting at outdoor and conservation events, and giving presentations to interested groups.
CRF also conducts habitat and public attitude surveys, as well as evaluates evidence and conducts investigations in collaboration with wildlife agencies to document cougar presence along their expanding range into eastern habitat.
Guest Commentary by Nina Kidd, writer, nature photographer and advocate for wildlife conservation.
A mountain lion lost in downtown Santa Monica, California, was a call for help from wild animals squeezed by a city. The good news is, wildlife corridors can be their way out.
The city of Santa Monica lies just south of its mountain range bordering the Pacific Ocean.
On the morning of May 22, 2012, a janitor discovered a wild cat crouching in the courtyard of an office building in Santa Monica, California.
Cougar! The news went out by cell phone and Twitter: A baby mountain lion, 75 lbs., Female. No — Adult. Male, about 95 lbs.
News bites on cell phones alerted residents. The confused stories featured a blurry shot of a mountain lion curled on the tile floor and peering up through the fronds of a tropical potted plant.
The photo confirmed that reporters got the main thing right: A mountain lion (also known as a cougar) had appeared in their town.
Helicopters clattered above the three-story building. Bystanders snapped photos of police stringing yellow crime-scene tape.
Local newspapers reported a chaotic scene in the 40′ x 40′ patio of the building, where officers blasted fire hoses and pepper spray “to contain the beast.”
The whole thing caught Santa Monicans by surprise. Their seaside city, tucked in a southwest corner of Los Angeles, was until then better known for its historic amusement pier and elegant dining, than as a stopover for large wild predators.
Keeping an eye on the mountain lion, the police weighed their options. They had phoned for Fish and Game wardens and National Park Service biologists. Fish and Game darted the animal with a tranquilizer. Vets and biologists inject drugs that briefly put animals to sleep so they can examine or transport them without injury. To the mountain lion, already agitated by the noise, glass walls and jittery humans, the stinging tranquilizer dart was the final straw. He broke toward daylight. A policeman shot the animal dead.
Later reports from participants varied, but the result was clear. When National Park biologist Jeff Sikich arrived, he sent the news to headquarters. One more mountain lion, a young male and apparently healthy, was lost to the precious wilderness in Southern California. A post mortem exam revealed that the male was two to three years old, and his DNA showed he was probably offspring of the small population of mountain lions living in nearby Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, directly northwest of Santa Monica.
But from all sides, questions poured in. What was this animal doing in town? And why did he leave the mountains that were his home?
The short answer is, the young cat was lost. He wasn’t looking for food. Based on the condition and habits of lions they have followed, Park Service biologists believe that the supply of mule deer in the Santa Monica Mountains is sufficient to feed the mountain lion population there, estimated at ten to fifteen, including females.
A short stroll to town: For an animal that regularly logs 10 miles in one evening’s hunting, from the Santa Monica Mountains to the paved streets of Santa Monica is an easy walk. It’s five miles or less to the business building where the young mountain lion was found and shot in the spring of 2012. (And yard fences between hardly rate a pause. Think of your pet kitty leaping from the floor onto your bed, and multiply that lifting power by about five.)
No, this cat wasn’t hungry. Nor was he rabid or feeble-minded. An adult mountain lion stakes out a home range and hunts alone. As a male kitten matures he becomes his father’s competitor. Kids move on, or face the superior force of Dad. The age-old paternal snarl: “this house isn’t big enough for the two of us,” is a law of survival for mountain lions.
The natural tendency for each young male to move out and establish his own home range — called dispersal — is what keeps the genetic line strong. Typically, mountain lions live far apart across varied landscapes. Once established, each young adult male would be defending his own new home range, each covering 200 square miles or more. (Adult females’ ranges, which can measure 75 square miles, are often located within a male’s range.)
But in the Santa Monica Mountains, all suitable mountain lion land is bounded by city and suburb, and sealed quite tight by the Santa Monica Bay to the south, busy eight-lane freeways to the east and north, and croplands to the west.
In 2002, biologist Jeff Sikich and his colleagues found that the home range of P1, the first adult male mountain lion they followed, encompassed nearly all of the Santa Monica Mountains’ 153,025 protected acres. P1 mated and fathered a litter of four kittens, two of them male. Two years later, only a single female kitten survived. The rest of the litter had been killed by other mountain lions.
In 2004 wild animal veterinarian Lynn Whited accompanied biologists to locate the first litter of mountain lion kittens in the Santa Monica Mountains study. Dr. Whited implanted radio chips in the month-old kittens which allowed the scientists to tell where they accompanied P2, their mother, for protection and training. It seems that P2 was a good mother. At one year of age all four kittens were able to hunt and feed themselves on their own.Wildlife biologist Jeff Sikich, July 19, 2002, at the first capture of P1, then the dominant male of the Santa Monica Mountains. Over the nearly seven years park service biologists followed him, this solitary animal’s home range at times extended over nearly all the 27 mile width and 5.9 mile depth of Santa Monica Mountains Recreation Area.
Last May, the young male that police killed on Second Street in Santa Monica was almost certainly trying to disperse. Born in these city-bound mountains, he had reached the age when he needed a home range of his own.
In 2012, the National Park Service data told scientists that the mountain lion population in the Santa Monica Mountains is hanging on. But recently biologist Sikich called the animals’ situation ‘dire.’ The young male shot last May in the Santa Monica office building left a population where DNA has indicated at least two instances of first-order mountain lion inbreeding (specifically father-daughter matings).
Human incursions, especially the splitting of wilderness lands by highways and development, are threatening the present and future of large and even medium-sized mammals all over the western U.S. Their habitat is becoming fragmented. And mountain lions, who need so much room to roam, will be among the first to go.
So, what can be done to save them?
The Good News
Since at least the 1940’s, wildlife biologists around the world have been thinking about the threat of habitat fragmentation. Recently, mountain lions in Southern California have been helping find solutions. Their needs, as well as their abilities, could make the mountain lion the 21st century poster child for a lifesaving idea that conservationists everywhere are embracing: wildlife corridors.
Wildlife corridors, also called wildlife linkages, can take many forms. Ideally, a wildlife corridor is a swath of natural land protected from sights and sounds of humans so that animals feel safe moving back and forth along them to find new habitat, and mate with others of their species there to ensure their kind will survive.
Until the late 1980’s, however, the wildlife corridor idea remained mostly a theory.
The Cougar Connection
In 1988, Dr. Paul Beier, a wildlife ecologist in California, embarked on the first study of near-urban mountain lions in the nation. Dr. Beier found and monitored pathways the mountain lions used to navigate roadways and parkland in 800 square miles of the Santa Ana Mountains (south of Disneyland).
ROUTE OF RADIO COLLARED M6 THROUGH COAL CANYON BIOLOGICAL CORRIDOR
Home range of M6 from May 1991 through January 1992. Coal canyon is the dark area just south of the point where M6 crossed the Riverside Freeway (narrowest portion of green-shaded home range).
Over the course of five years (1988-1993) Beier and colleagues radio-collared and monitored 32 mountain lions, including adults and kittens. (Read Beier’s study,The Cougar in the Santa Ana Mountain Range, California).
Mountain Lions on the Map
Beier’s study revealed that mountain lions will find and discreetly use very narrow strips of land (such as drainage culverts under roads and even dangerous freeway undercrossings) to reach mates in nearby habitat patches.
However, Beier also found that the three major pathways or corridors mountain lions used in the Santa Ana Mountains were all at risk of being blocked by planned suburban development projects.
Using mathematical models, Beier predicted that unless those and other corridors were kept open (and planned housing developments and roadways were relocated), the mountain lions that had been living in those Southern California mountains for thousands of years would begin to die off, mountain by mountain. The species could disappear from Southern California forever.
More Bad News
If they go, mountain lions, the last widespread top predator in North America, might not die out alone. Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), known as the father of wildlife ecology in America, likened a self-sustaining wilderness to a complex mechanism, like a watch. He wrote to would-be wildlife managers, “. . .who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.”
Corridor Planners Need Mountain Lions
Wildlife corridors are custom projects. The design of each one depends on the local topography, the types of barriers, the surrounding land use, which animals and plants are most in need of connectivity in their landscape, and many other factors. A crucial element to building them is the will to action.
Twelve years ago, a group of young conservation biologists in California noted with impatience the accumulation of solid habitat fragmentation studies that sat useless on library shelves. Few people had acted on them to build actual corridors. For the first time, these biologists invited scientists as well as land use planners and stake holders from all over California to a meeting at Southern California’s San Diego Zoo.
In 2001 the group published a map, with an explanatory report, that pointed out over 300 “Missing Linkages” throughout the State of California, some usable by wildlife, most needing restoration, and all requiring long-term legal protection.
In a meeting of San Francisco planners and conservationists in 2010 Paul Beier urges that land for wildlife corridors should be large and wide enough to allow as many native species as possible to move freely across the landscape to find food, shelter and mates, and maintain a healthy biodiversity in the wild.
Dr. Paul Beier, by then an acknowledged expert in corridor design and implementation, urged committees representing each of the state’s eight eco-regions to identify as many as fifteen or twenty key, or focal, species that planned linkages should accommodate. Because of the mountain lion’s need for so much wild habitat, and its ability to find and use wildlife corridors, the committees identified the mountain lion as a focal species for seven out of the eight eco-regions in California.
Dr. Beier took the statewide planning idea to Arizona. Now, besides California, Florida, Arizona and Montana, Oregon and Washington have developed or are in the process of developing statewide connectivity maps. Local participation in planning is leading to actual progress on the ground.
Meanwhile, Back in the Santa Monica Mountains
Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, birthplace of the young mountain lion in this story, was certified in 1978, a national park partnership that includes three existing state parks and spaces around them. Though initially there was no stated plan to acquire land needed for wildlife corridors, and supporters of the park disagreed about land purchase priorities, the next year, The Santa Monica Mountains Comprehensive Plan (1979) called for wildlife corridors for “maintaining open spaces between areas of urban development for purposes of wildlife movement.” Those purchases were slow in coming. Ten years later, studies by the National Park Service, biologist Michael Soulé, The Nature Conservancy and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy advised urgently that, even though the Los Angeles to Ventura Freeway (Interstate 101) traversed potential corridor and linkage areas, “land to the northeast and south of Cheeseboro Canyon could still act as habitat and corridor zones.” Essentially, the latter area, Liberty Canyon, was the only place possible for a link between the core of the park to the south and the open space in the Simi Hills and Santa Susana Mountains to the north.
“MOUNTAIN LIONS ARE NOT VERY GOOD AT CROSSING ROADS. . .”
Between 2004 and 2012 Santa Monica Mountains biologists recorded seven mountain lions killed by vehicles on roads in their vicinity. In 1995 Paul Beier reported that tagged mountain lions in the Santa Ana Mountains crossed paved roads 65% less often than expected. . . and they especially avoided crossing freeways. These two near-urban studies may indicate the strain on wild communities as more people move to, and expect to drive in, the wilderness. (Image title is a quote by Seth Riley from Urban Carnivores, 2010.)
The park’s conservancy managed to purchase bits of land so that today one protected corner of the park, named Liberty Canyon, extends north, beyond the 101 Freeway. If animals could cross the freeway, Liberty Canyon would allow them open access for five more miles, on their way northwest to connect with national forest lands.
On both sides approaching the 101 Freeway, Liberty Canyon has been carefully restored with native plant cover. Several mountain lions that park service biologists radio-collared have ventured down its ridges, close enough to see the natural hillsides beyond the eight freeway lanes in their way. Since 2002 however, when the current Santa Monica Mountains study began, the scientists know of none that ventured onto the freeway surface and survived. They have confirmed that half a dozen mountain lions suffered fatal collisions with vehicles on roadways in the area, including two of the cats that were killed on a commuter road that cuts through near the center of the Santa Monica Mountains range. This number is out of the 26 animals counted in their study during its first ten years, plus the six (seven including the mountain lion killed in Santa Monica) seen, but never collared for study.
In August of 2012 Barbara Marquez, a Senior Environmental Planner for Caltrans, showed her children a working wildlife undercrossing that Caltrans built during construction of their State Route 118. That highway, running east-west about 6.5 miles north of the Santa Monica Mountains, is a somewhat permeable barrier for mountain lions. In recent years two of the radio-collared animals who were part of the Santa Monica Mountains study used this underpass at Corriganville Park in a peaceful sharing — hikers by day, animals at night.
A Solid Case for Connectivity
The value of a wildlife corridor for the animals in the Santa Monica Mountains was demonstrated most dramatically between 2009 and 2012.
On a February night in 2009, GPS data confirmed that a radio-collared male, known as P12, who had been ranging north of the 101 Freeway in the Liberty Canyon area, had made a significant move. His collar was transmitting inside the park, but now it was south of the 101 Freeway!
This was an exciting first. How had he managed it? No one could say for sure, but based on the sequence of location points, it seemed likely that he used the freeway undercrossing at Liberty Canyon, a street that would be less busy at night.
The good news for this small inbred population is that P12 brought the gift of new genetic material from the north to the very closely related in-park mountain lions. P12’s offspring, currently ranging in the park, now carry some of his genes, which could help maintain increased genetic diversity in the population there for some years to come. If only passage there could take place regularly, and northward as well as southbound!
The California Transportation Department, Caltrans, has drawn plans and, along with private conservation groups, has been looking for funds to build a dedicated wildlife corridor under the 101 Freeway. The cost is estimated at $9.42 million. The Liberty Canyon Wildlife Corridor would be a major step to realization of that lifesaving north-south link.
Dr. Seth Riley, Wildlife Ecologist for Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, has been studying carnivores there for over twelve years. He co-edited and contributed to Urban Carnivores, published by The Johns Hopkins University Press in 2010. Besides the mountain lions (study begun 2002) he continues to study coyotes and bobcats (the bobcat study in cooperation with UCLA doctoral candidate Laurel Klein Serieys since 2006). Evidence from both coyotes and bobcats confirms that they too have been affected by the habitat fragmentation caused by freeways, as well as by other human-caused hazards. These other species should also benefit from the planned wildlife corridor.
The Liberty Canyon Corridor: Just a Start
After crossing the 101 Freeway, animals from the Santa Monica Mountains must still traverse a second freeway, State Highway 118, as well as a broad major roadway, State Highway 126, if they are to complete the 26-30 mile trip to Los Padres National Forest.
The National Park Service biologists, following radio-collared mountain lions, have expanded their wildlife connectivity studies and efforts northward to include those roadways, and routes through the Simi Hills and the Santa Susana Mountains. The scientists are assisted by university students, volunteers of all ages and the biologists at Caltrans.
If the story of this one park, this one linkage, sounds difficult and expensive, it’s true. Re-connecting the wild is an enormous job. But there is growing agreement in scientific and conservation communities that wildlife corridors are our best hope for saving mountain lions and maintaining the ecological balance in our wild lands.
With a functioning linkage north out of the Santa Monica Mountains, perhaps the next young male mountain lion, instead of blundering into Santa Monica to his death, might safely find his way north to a new wild home.
Dr. Paul Beier, an advocate for mountain lions and wildlife corridors, is convinced that the connectivity movement will grow, and that corridors will do much to keep our precious wilderness areas alive.
Talking of it, he smiles and spreads his hands. Supporters will continue to join in corridor work with enthusiasm because, he says, it’s a wonderful experience: “It connects people to the land.”
Guest Commentary by Liza Gross of QUEST, a science and environmental series of KQED San Francisco.
More than 40 years ago, Senator John Dunlap (D-Napa) made conservation history when his mountain lion hunting moratorium passed the California Legislature and became law in 1971. He recalls the fight to pass the bill and his guiding principle, “when in doubt, preserve.”
Forty-two years ago, California’s mountain lions got a break from an unlikely ally. Lowell Dunn, the president of Vallejo’s Rod and Gun Club, wrote Assemblyman John Dunlap that he thought the time had come to stop shooting mountain lions. The hunter’s plea sparked the beginning of the end of state-sanctioned persecution.
John Dunlap (D-Napa) championed wildlife conservation with the first legislation in the U.S. to protect mountain lions from hunting.
In some 30 years of hunting deer, Dunn had seen a lion just twice. He wanted the chance to see another one, he told Dunlap, but worried the species might perish before he had the chance.
“He hoped that somehow there’d be a way to continue the existence of the lion,” recalls Dunlap. The 89-year-old Napa resident left the political stage more than three decades ago, but admits to enjoying a good political fight in his day, especially for a good cause. The hunter couldn’t have chosen a better legislative target.
Dunlap, who started an eight-year run in the Assembly in 1966 and then served four years in the Senate, had always believed in preserving wildlife, he says. He readily embraced the lion’s cause. “I recognized that we were invading their habitat, that there was a conflict, and that we needed a more thoughtful approach.”
A self-described “strong Democrat” and Sierra Club member, Dunlap won the big cat its first reprieve from hunters’ crosshairs with a moratorium on sport hunting, signed by then Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1971. The moratorium went into effect when the scheduled lion hunting season ended in February 1972.
Dunlap met stiff opposition from livestock ranchers when he first introduced his bill, in 1970. But the next year he encountered less resistance, which he credits to a burgeoning ecological awareness and support from his district. He recalls that Starr Baldwin, famed editor of the St. Helena Star, told grape-growers at a local meeting they should welcome lions because they feed on deer and raccoons, no friends to grapevines.
Initially, Dunlap sought the support of the state Fish and Game Commission but quickly realized he’d better look elsewhere: “They were pretty much hunter dominated.”
Dunlap turned to wildlife preservation and conservation groups instead, but credits the lions themselves with ensuring the bill’s passage. His legislative assistant, Mike Gage, met two tame mountain lions at a meeting to build public support for the measure. “He got the idea that if we introduced the bill and had a press conference with the lions, that would be a great sendoff.”
“I thought it was grandstanding, but recognized that it did have value,” he adds. “And I had enough ego that I liked to show off, so we did it.”
Dunlap took questions at his Capitol press conference flanked by two rather imposing lions. He admits the cats made him nervous, though they were leashed, with their handler a few feet away.
Assemblyman John Dunlap made headlines after posing with his lion ambassadors, Huntley and Brinkley, at a Capitol press conference announcing his lion hunting moratorium bill in 1971. Lion handler John Harris keeps a watchful eye on his charges. (Photo courtesy of UPI)
Dunlap and his lions made the front page of nearly 20 daily California papers, plus the London Daily Mail, “for whatever that was worth.”
Nine months later, California enacted the first measure in the country to protect lions. It remains the only state to outlaw trophy hunting of lions, after residents voted twice to uphold the ban.
Dunlap has no illusions that trophy hunters will ever accept the notion that lions should be protected. Even so, he has little patience for Fish and Game Commission President Dan Richards, who recently won notoriety by traveling to another state to kill a mountain lion.
Richards bagged his trophy in Idaho, where such kills are legal and so, his defenders insist, no big deal. Had he killed a lion in California, he could have been fined up to $10,000 and sentenced to a year in jail.
Dunlap is not among his defenders. “I certainly sympathize with trying to do something to point with shame,” he says. “I can’t say he doesn’t have a right to do it, but I don’t think it’s very good judgment.”
(Richards was voted out of the presidency by his fellow commissioners at their August 8, 2012 meeting.)
Dunlap says he never had the inclination to hunt, adding with a sly smile, “I was born without any wisdom teeth, which maybe shows I haven’t developed the hunter quality.”
“I suppose killing animals is the way we used to survive to protect ourselves and get food,” he muses. “Now it’s a sport, and I would hope as time goes on we would find other things to do.”
Dunlap says he wanted to protect the mountain lion not just to preserve a single species but to send a wake-up call to governments to protect the environment before it’s too late. “My idea was, when in doubt, preserve.”
Ecosystems are complicated, he says. “If we screwed up the wrong ones at the wrong time it could end up threatening our own way of life and happiness, let alone existence.”
When Dunlap pitched his mountain lion bill on the Assembly floor in 1970, he pointed out that in the early 1900s just two passenger pigeons remained in the world. “They were both male,” he says. “We woke up too late on that.”
Return of the American Lion? Taking Action May Pave the Way to the Midwest and East
In June 2012, the possibility of mountain lions returning to the Midwest — and ultimately to other states along the eastern seaboard — was heralded in newspapers across the country. Headline after headline welcomed the return of mountain lions to places where they have not been seen for many decades. How did this come to pass? Is the trend real and sustainable? How was the news received by local policy makers? To address some of these critical questions, the Mountain Lion Foundation reviewed three recent research projects..
All the hoopla resulted from the release of a single scientific paper which concluded that lions were returning to some Midwestern states. The paper was authored by Ph.D candidate Michelle LaRue and Dr. Clay Nielsen and published by the Journal of Wildlife Management on June 14, 2012. But in their exuberance the press didn’t ask some key questions, such as: how did this come to pass, whether the trend is sustainable, and how was the news received by local policy makers.To address some of these critical questions, the Mountain Lion Foundation looked not only at the LaRue & Nielsen paper but also at two other recent projects: a summary paper from the Cougar Rewilding Foundation(formally the Eastern Cougar Foundation) and a presentation by the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station.
The following is a synopsis of these three important scientific reports and MLF’s conclusions on what this might portend for the eastern return of Puma concolor.
Between 1990 and 2008, 178 confirmed lion sightings were recorded by researchers and state wildlife agencies throughout the Midwest, the East, and parts of Canada. In June 2012, Ph.D candidate Michelle LaRue and Dr. Clay Nielsen published a paper in the Journal of Wildlife Management analyzing those sightings.
Their conclusions are that sightings of mountain lions have become more common in the region over recent years and it appears that lions prefer to stay close to their traditional habitat (woodland forests, riverine corridors and steep or broken terrain) since 79 percent of all confirmed sighting occurred within 50 kilometers of such terrain.
LaRue’s team also validated the current understanding that young male lions tend to travel farther than female lions. When evidence was available that allowed the researchers to determine sex (carcasses, tissue samples), 76 percent of the samples were found to belong to male lions.
Ultimately the paper concluded that, “Given the number of cougar confirmations, the increasing frequency of occurrences and that long-distance dispersal has been documented via radio-collared individuals, our research suggests that cougars are continuing to recolonize Midwestern North America.”
CRF’s report posits that sightings alone are unreliable in determining a number for how many lions are actually in the Midwest. Along its journey, a single lion will leave hundreds of signs (tracks, scat, cached prey, hair samples, etc.) and may result in dozens of samples submitted to researchers. These duplicate accounts are misleading and without DNA analysis to identify individuals, the number of transient Midwest lions may be drastically inflated.
CRF also believes the increase in sightings isn’t the result of anything new, but instead is a response to something started decades ago when western game managers started regulating the killing of lions. Now, 40 years later, lions have dispersed “from and breed in island habitats east of the Rockies. To date, there are five recolonized areas within 160 miles of the Eastern Front.”
CRF’s report agrees with the evidence that young male lions are traveling long distances looking for mates, but takes this as evidence that true recolonization (breeding pairs, not just long treks by males) is a slow process of incremental advances. “It took twenty years of dispersal from the Back Hills to establish a breeding colony 100 miles to the southeast in the Nebraska Pine Ridge. At that rate, under good conditions, breeding may not occur in Minnesota before 2050, let alone further east.”
The report also noted that current lion hunting policies in “breeder” states could threaten forty years of species recovery and stop the eastern expansion of the species.
Prior to their research it had been assumed that the lions reaching Missouri had come from Texas by following what is known as “least-cost pathways” or the preferred habitats and the easiest landscapes for lions to traverse. However, when RMRS matched their DNA samples with known population characteristics in western states, the results showed that lions were actually dispersing from different areas than those predicted. Though a portion may have used known least-cost pathways, when it came to the lions in Missouri, they originated almost exclusively from the Black Hills region of South Dakota.
Rocky Mountain Research Station researchers also addressed the sighting/number issue by reviewing the boom in cougar sightings in Wisconsin in 2010.
In just a six month period there were over a dozen confirmed reports of lions from all over the state. Some hunters and nervous ranchers began campaigning to allow a hunting season on the population of cats that appeared to have exploded over night.
After careful analysis by the RMRS on hair and scat samples collected at sighting locations, the results came back that all these reports were of the same, solitary individual lion. This one lion had wandered the entire state looking for a suitable habitat but never settled, probably due to the absence of female lions. All the fuss was over one lion.
Mountain Lion Foundation’s Analysis of the LaRue and Nielsen, Cougar Rewilding Foundation, and Rocky Mountain Research Station Research
At first glance, the new research reports appear to be conflicting. Are mountain lions returning to the Midwest or not? Is there a plethora of lions or just a few that keep being sighted over and over again? Are the transient lions Texans or immigrants from the Black Hills of South Dakota?
What is actually happening is a great example of research which addresses differing questions with differing methods and how science puts together pieces of a puzzle and begins to illustrate the big picture in context from isolated facts. The data in these research reports is not conflicting, merely the conclusions some have drawn from the data.
What We Know About Mountain Lions Moving East
There has been an increase in the number of “confirmed” mountain lion sightings in states that do not currently host viable populations.
The number of sightings does not necessarily equate to the number of lions. The overwhelming majority of sighted lions are young transient males and not breeding pairs.
Mountain lions are not necessarily using the most obvious wildlife corridors to reach a particular destination.
The natural return of lions to their historic range is threatened by human policies.
Let’s look at each of these facts one at a time.
There has been an increase in the number of “confirmed” mountain lion sightings in states that do not currently host viable populations.
The ability to study lion territorial habits and dispersal patterns has steadily improved over the past two decades with technological and methodological improvements in DNA testing, radio and satellite tracking, power supplies, microchips, remote camera and video monitoring, capture and release procedures, and researchers sharing data across state lines.
In fact, dispersals far to the east may have been occurring sporadically for many years, and only now are we able to accurately document and confirm them. Sightings in the Midwest and East prior to the year 2000 were commonly attributed to rural myth, mistaken identity, or the release or escape of lions that were once held as pets.
Until genetic identification of lion lineages became available, there was little reason to believe that any particular sighting might indicate a real long-range dispersal.
For example, no one predicted that the mountain lion killed in Connecticut in June 2011 had traveled over 2,000 miles from the Black Hills of South Dakota until DNA results were matched to sightings and DNA samples taken along the lion’s eastward path through South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, (up through Canada), then New York and finally Connecticut, and someone connected the dots.
Moreover, in this digital and cellular age, potential lion sightings are easily and rapidly reported by more people allowing scientists to respond and confirm those sightings faster than ever before.
The number of sightings does not necessarily equate to the number of lions.
One of the most definitive ways to count the number of lions is to base censuses on physical evidence rather than eye-witness reports. By restricting the “official” count to only include carcasses, DNA-tested and identified samples, radio-collared individuals, or live-captured lions, the chances of duplication are virtually eliminated.
For example, wildlife officials in four states found and confirmed evidence of mountain lions that all traced back — through DNA analysis — to a single cat that was ultimately killed by an automobile in Connecticut. One of those states, Wisconsin, has now attributed 12 different sightings to that lion.
In Cougar Rewilding Foundation’s report, researchers eliminated all identified duplicate records and narrowed their list of potential lions down to 76 over a twelve-and-a-half year period.
Of the 76 lions that were actually confirmed to have entered the Midwest, all were killed except two that were captured and held in captivity. None survived to establish a territory in the wild.
The overwhelming majority of sighted lions are young transient males and not breeding pairs.
Finding at least one mate and establishing a resident territory is the end goal of any dispersal. Most female lions establish home ranges within fifty miles of their mother’s territory. Although males will disperse further, little or no progress is made toward establishing new breeding populations unless females are also found. The appearance of females well outside the species’ current range often takes decades.
Only twelve females have been documented making the long dispersal into uncharted portions of the Midwest, averaging only one to two per year over the eleven year analysis period. None of them appeared to cross paths with dispersing males before meeting their untimely deaths.
The tediously slow migration of individual females moving east means that it takes many generations for lions to expand the range of their breeding populations even when individual males have wandered thousands of miles away. Neither males nor females will stop to establish a home range without the presence of possible mates. So ultimately, for a new breeding population to start, a male and female — who have dispersed separately from the west — must randomly stumble upon each other in the two-million square miles of habitat east of their range. These random bets on exact location and timing, repeated over and over, represent the lion’s only chance for survival.
To make recolonization even less likely, the Midwest’s prairie country is not prime lion habitat. Even given the very best of conditions, only a tiny number of cats could potentially establish large home ranges sparsely across the landscape. Lions prefer areas with denser cover. But mountain lions can and will use the prairies’ open spaces and river corridors as highways to travel to better habitats further east.
Experts agree that the preponderance of young male lions traveling record distances is an indication of the lack of females across the landscapes they are traversing. This may very likely be the result of excessive trophy hunting and an overkill of females.
Basically what is happening is that after being kicked out of the den by their mothers, a few young dispersing males head off in an easterly direction from places like the Black Hills of South Dakota. In their travels, they come across habitat which in a normal situation would be highly suitable (appropriate vegetation, plenty of prey species (deer) and no mature males to fight), but lacking in the one factor that would convince them to stop their search — a mate. So they keep on moving, usually in the general in which direction they started.
Mountain lions are not necessarily using the most obvious wildlife corridors to reach a particular destination.
Of course, dispersing lions can’t know which is the best path to take. They have no roadmaps and no scouts reporting back on conditions ahead. Transient lions may start out in one direction, but the presence of insurmountable obstacles (intransigent males, impassable highways, sprawling subdivisions, suppressive human actions) may lead them elsewhere or even stop them dead.
Dr. Nielsen’s work has provided lion researchers with a good map of important wildlife corridors that could be used by lions and other wildlife and should be protected, but sometimes the above mentioned obstacles work to prevent young lions from even starting down those wildlife roads.
Both landscape and population genetics are important factors for helping us better understand wildlife movement and health. But unfortunately, genetic analysis cannot reveal which habitat corridors the lions actually used. It only tells us which western population they are closely related to. That is why it is critical to not only maintain as many dispersal avenues as possible, but to also allow as many origination points as well. For example, Dr. Nielsen’s researchindicated that mountain lions arriving in Missouri most likely traveled established corridors from Texas, but genetic evidence proved otherwise.
So that begs the question: what happened to stop lions from dispersing out of Texas? Are the policies that regulate the species in that state so excessive that local lions are having a hard enough time just back-filling newly opened territories and do not have sufficient population numbers to expand the species’ range? Or is something else killing them off en route?
The natural return of lions to their historic range is threatened by human policies.
Recent research has shown that human interaction — changes in habitat and hunting/eradication policies — is a major factor in the ability of Puma concolorto reestablish historic territories. Conditions of just a few decades ago which helped the species recover from the effects of human persecution have changed to the point where it is no longer a question as to whether expansion will continue, but rather whether survival at the origination point is even possible.
Take for example the geographic region known as the Black Hills. This island of lion habitat encompasses just over 5,000 square miles and touches on three separate states—Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming. Up until 2005, Mountain lions were protected as an “endangered species” in South Dakota where most of the Black Hills is located. This benign policy allowed the species not only to grow within that state’s boundaries but over the years, to send out a small number of “colonists” eastward.
But that has all changed. Excessive hunting quotas, coupled with members of the state game commission that apparently want to eradicate the species, have created a situation where South Dakota’s resident lion population and its migrant males have been devastated. What’s more, Wyoming has decided to follow South Dakota’s lead by increasing the hunting quota of lions in their small portion of the Black Hills, and Nebraska has just announced its plans to start up a lion hunting season of its own as well.
What was once the greatest promise as a source for a return of breeding lion populations to the Midwest is now being turned into a graveyard of dreams.
And what about those Midwestern states that would be the recipients of this eastward migration of a formally extirpated species? As mentioned above Nebraska, the closest “prairie” state to the breeding source in South Dakota, decided to greet its new residents with a hunting season. In both Kansas and Missouri, legislation was introduced to allow people to kill these magnificent creatures on sight. One Missouri legislator even went so far as to call them an “invasive species.”
Unfortunately, lions aren’t safe even in those Midwestern states that aren’t actively trying to kill them. A couple years ago when the first lion in over a hundred years wandered back into Iowa, it was killed by a deer hunter after he discovered that there was no state law prohibiting that action (read Mountain Lion Shot Near Marengo for more details).
The Mountain Lion’s Return to the East:
Possible, But Not Assured
The natural return of the American lion to portions of its historic range has long been noticed by the public and now verified by science. But that isn’t enough. Three simple actions still need to occur for the eastern migration of mountain lions to become reality.
First, key population cores along the eastern edge of the species’ current range (such as the Black Hills region) need to be protected from local policies and actions that would eliminate them as national source populations or “breeding colonies.” No matter what members of state game commissions might think, a majority of lions live and breed on federal lands and subsequently belong to all Americans. These animals are supposed to be managed under the public trust doctrine—and killing them off for fun or to satisfy small special interest groups doesn’t fit that definition.
Second, critical wildlife corridors — least-cost pathways — all the way from the Rockies to the eastern seaboard (not just to the Mississippi River) need to be identified, protected, and if necessary, enhanced to support future migrations when the core populations have recovered sufficiently to use them. In addition, large tracts of land on the east coast, especially along the Appalachian Mountains, need to be conserved to ensure that dispersing lions have somewhere to establish large home ranges.
Third, protective legislation needs to be enacted now in those states which do not yet have viable lion populations. This is too important an issue to leave until the last minute, where a knee-jerk reaction on the part of policy makers might prevent the reestablishment of the species. Take Missouri for example. Up until just a few years ago, mountain lions were on that state’s endangered species list. Then in 2006, based on unfounded concerns from cattle ranchers, the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) Commission announced it was “…undesirable to have a breeding population of mountain lions in Missouri […] therefore, the Department of Conservation will not encourage the species to reestablish itself in the state.” This decision removed the mountain lion from the state’s endangered species list and reclassified it as “extirpated,” meaning extinct (or no local breeding population) in a particular area. Because of the irrational fear of what could happen and misinformation about the species, the mountain lion is no longer protected in Missouri.
The return of the American lion to Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and even Iowa should be a sign of vindication for the modern environmental movement. Instead, it now appears to possibly be a frustrating taunt of what could have been. The eastern migration and natural resettlement of long lost territories rests on the edge of a knife. Mountain lions have proven that if left alone, they can recover from over 200 years of persecution. It is now time for all Americans to let their voices be heard and allow this natural progression take place.
No Matter Where You Live:
Here’s What You Can Do to Help
Give a voice to the American lion in your state no matter what state you live in. If we’ve learned just one thing from the new research, it’s that action is never too soon or too late.
In your own words, illustrate the value of mountain lions, the threats they face, and why you hope to see them survive someday on your local landscape. Be exuberant! Now’s the time to extend protection to the mountain lion across the nation! And now’s the time for YOU to:
Write letters to the editor of your local newspapers, particularly those which cover lion news stories. Comment on the websites of local television and radio stations that cover stories about wildlife.
Support the scientific efforts to map wildlife corridors in your state, preserve the corridors intact, and be proactive to bypass any roadblocks.
Support local, statewide, and national efforts to preserve deer and mountain lion habitat. (Read our feature on Western Wildways, a large scale attempt to map North American wildlife corridors.)
Keep up to date with ongoing scientific research and news stories about mountain lions by signing up for MLF’s updates.
Become a Member of MLF by donating any amount to the Mountain Lion Foundation. Help create a critical mass of MLF membership in your state so the Foundation can speak with authority when it demands protections for lions.
Since the late 1970’s, mountain lions have been dispersing into as well as establishing small breeding populations in five island-like habitats east of the Rockies: Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park in Alberta and Saskatchewan, Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Montana, the Badlands in North Dakota, the Black Hills in South Dakota and Wyoming, and the Pine Ridge of northwestern Nebraska. These five patches are home to the only breeding populations of mountain lions east of their current range, aside from the endangered Florida panther.
Guest Commentary by Bob McCoy, MLF Volunteer
Field Representative, Sammamish, Washington
Where cities meet wildlands, crossing the boundary can often make the difference between life and death for a mountain lion. We all know that mountain lions are often shot and killed to insure public safety when they wander across this unmarked boundary following prey such as deer or raccoons, in search of water, or when challenged out of their territory by a parent or competing lion. Bill Hebner, a Captain in the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife (WDFW) envisioned and implemented an alternative that allows authorities to relocate some cougars back to the wild: Karelian Bear Dogs.
The communities of Sammamish and Issaquah lie along what wildlife biologists call the wildland-urban interface – often abbreviated as WUI – as does much of Washington State. The WUI is a line that loosely defines where nature and wildlife meets urban or suburban development. Occasionally, wildlife wanders across the line, gets lost, and attracts attention.
WDFW Captain Bill Hebner and the Department’s Six Karelian Bear Dogs.
We have all seen articles stating, “Authorities kill wild animal for public safety.” Most of us (statistics are with me on this) ask, “Why didn’t they relocate the animal? Why did they kill it?”
Captain Bill Hebner of the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife has pondered that same question over the many years he has served in wildlife enforcement. Bill’s current jurisdiction of North Puget Sound consists of King, Snohomish, Skagit, Whatcom, Island, and San Juan counties. Before taking charge of fish and wildlife enforcement in this area, Bill helped to establish WDFW’s Statewide Special Investigation Unit in the mid ’80s and also worked to solve interstate and international wildlife crimes.
In the early ’90s, Bill’s undercover investigation into illegal harvesting and selling of steelhead, salmon, and sturgeon led to the conviction of several dozen fishermen and fish-buying businesses which were breaking the law and endangering these species for a tidy profit.
With the belief that bears and humans can co-exist, Captain Bill Hebner initiated a public education and information campaign. He worked with his staff and local media to successfully explain the problem of feeding wildlife and the value of reconditioning offending animals rather than destroying them.
Governor’s Award for Leadership in Management
Reconditioning is essentially reinforcing a wild animal’s natural fear of humans enough that the animal can recognize the boundaries of human habitation and stay clear of those dangers.
How does one ‘recondition’ a bear or cougar?
Dogs! After seeing the success of a Karelian bear dog used by a department biologist, Captain Hebner studied how the dogs worked in other parts of the world to improve enforcement and public safety situations. He established the program in WDFW’s Enforcement Division, and is largely responsible for advocating and sustaining the Karelian bear dog program in Washington, the first in the United States.
WDFW OFFICERS TEAM UP
WDFW Officer Chris Moszeter and KBD partner Savute eye a bear in a tree following release.
Over the first four years the program has grown to six working dogs, all still working as of June 2012. The Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife maintains a website for the Karelian Dog Program, but the program itself is funded entirely by donations.
The Wind River Bear Institute breeds and gives early training to the dogs. The Institute then pairs the Karelian Bear Dog with an enforcement officer for life. Officers are screened and matched with the dog that best fits their personal needs. (See sidebar).
A part of the enforcement team, dogs are named, and given the title “KBD” to designate their official role. The first two working bear dogs at WDFW were “KBD Mishka” and “KBD Cash”.
In addition to reconditioning wildlife, the dogs help to nose-out evidence in poaching cases and act as community relations ambassadors to help teach citizens about living alongside wildlife.
Over Labor Day weekend in 2009 a cougar was treed in Seattle’s popular Discovery Park. The lion was tranquilized, captured, and then transported to the Cascade Range, far from the city.
At the point when the cougar was finally freed from the cage, KBD Cash aided in a hard release of the lion, which returned to the Cascades to live a natural life in the wild.
Watch video of a cougar
hard release in Washington.
“Hard release” refers to creating a situation that establishes a definite dislike of humans and dogs at the same time a cougar, bear, or other predator is returned to the wild. After officers sedate or trap an errant animal, the animal usually receives a health check-up and a tag or a tracking collar.
Once the animal is fully awake and aware, officers release it to a cacophony of barking KBDs, shouting humans, firecrackers, and the ignominy of a few stinging pellets as it exits from the scene. Current estimates are that 80% of the bears released by this method avoid people thereafter.
Karelian bear dog programs are “win-win” for people and wildlife. The dogs have helped to find more than a dozen orphan kittens since the program began.
The Karelian Bear Dog program is win-win for people and wildlife. At the point when a cougar or bear is captured, transported and finally freed from its cage, bear dogs assist in a hard release of the lion, which is returned to live a natural life in the wild.
On March 15, 2012, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation awarded Captain Hebner the National Guy Bradley Award for outstanding lifetime service and achievements in wildlife law enforcement.
A tough law enforcement officer, Bill has also shown that brains often serve better ends than do bullets.
KBD officers use a scientific approach, honing release techniques based on information gathered from earlier releases. The success of the program in Washington is catching the attention of wildlife conservation groups and other states and federal agencies.
When you feel a sense of relief upon hearing that a bear or cougar has been safely returned to the wild, you’ll know that a good measure of such success is due to wildlife officers like Bill Hebner who have questioned lethal methods, and who have worked to develop a better way.
KBD Cash watching closely as the cougar is being released on the snowy road, to make sure he keeps going! KBD Cash is paired with WDFW cougar biologist Rich Beausoloeil.
A mountain lion sighting near Fresno, California was confirmed via tracks by the California’s Department of Fish and Game on May 10, 2012. Although there are a few homes bordering this semi-rural area near Woodward Park, it is largely agricultural land, park land, and natural riverine habitat.The San Joaquin River Conservancy is working in the same general area to purchase a 22 mile regional greenspace and wildlife corridor along both sides of the river from Friant Dam to Highway 99. If their work is successful, we should expect to see more lions along the river in the near future.
The San Joaquin River forms a natural corridor for mountain lions from the foothills of the Sierra across the valley to the California’s Coast Range. This is true of other valley river systems as well: the American, Cosumnes, Tuolumne, and Sacramento, just to name a few.
Before European settlement, valley grasslands would have been prime hunting ground for mountain lions. Deer foraged there, as well as Tule Elk and many smaller prey species. Now the great central valley grasslands have largely given way to agriculture and suburban development, and are trisected by North-South freeways 99 and Interstate 5, and cougar sightings are few.
Of the big cat’s presence along the river, Lt. Tony Spada of the California Department of Fish and Game said that “To find these pawprints just signifies that we have a healthy ecosystem.”
The San Joaquin River forms a natural corridor for mountain lions from the foothills of the Sierra across the valley to the California’s Coast Range. This is true of other valley river systems as well: the American, Cosumnes, Tuolumne, and Sacramento, just to name a few.