This is part of an ongoing series, Species of the Week, cross-posted as Biodiversions at The Clade
In three months of writing this series, I have yet to cover a mammal, or any species with big teeth or claws. So this week, I ponder a mammal with both. It’s the land animal with the largest range in the Americas, from southern Canada to to the southern tip of the Andes: Felis concolor, more commonly known as cougar, mountain lion, catamount, or puma.
- Cougar, Yellowstone National Park, National Park Service Photo by K Fink
The cougar is the second largest cat in the Americas and the fourth largest in the world but is actually classified among Felinae, the suborder of smaller cats.
I’ve only seen a cougar once, but I wonder about their presence on our canyon property every day. They survive by not being seen. They get their meals by stalking, ambushing and making a quick bite through the neck. They’ve been reported to jump as high as eighteen feet and as far as forty.
I saw my first and only cougar a year and a half ago. It was a beautiful autumn day. We were driving the easement road through our neighbor’s ranch. A cougar emerged from the bushes and sauntered up the drive ahead of us a bit before bounding up the hill. Another hundred yards down the road, we looked up to see a herd of mule deer in a clearing. Perhaps one would be the cougar’s lunch.
Our eighty-two pound standard poodle (strong and fearless enough to be a good hunting dog if we trained him) usually presses forward in the car to see squirrels and grouse. But after seeing his wild match that day, he crouched in the back seat out of sight for awhile. And on the hour-long drive into town, I couldn’t shake the dueling shivers tingling my own spine. I marveled at the bigness and the beauty of the wild cat I’d been yearning for years to see. But I also wondered where that cat was when I took off alone earlier that morning and wandered up a hill less than a mile away and then hiked back down through some dense brush.
I try not to live in fear of wild animals, even ones with deadly teeth and claws. After all, I came to this place to understand them better. And I know that those living in more populous areas of the West, where depletion of habitat for prey animals leads starving cougars to desperate measures, have much more to fear. We still have plenty of deer and elk for our cougars. Still, I don’t walk alone in the early morning or at dusk. And I sometimes think twice about wandering alone around rocky outcroppings above our yurt at all. And I like to believe that walking with a large dog offers some deterrent.
Being alert to the cougar’s presence on a regular basis reminds me of a largely forgotten part of what it means to have become human. Our species attempts to master and control the world now. But we are descended from much smaller hominid ancestors, such as Australopithecines, who for millions of years were just as likely to be prey to large cats and raptors as they were to be successful predators. I don’t want to return to those days. But as long as large predators like cougars continue to co-exist with us (and I hope they will), there will always be some risk of getting pounced.
I try to keep all this in perspective. Death for death, there’s no contest. Cougars have so much more to fear from humans with guns than humans have to fear from the rare (though often fatal) cougar attack. There’s a lot of controversy around this in the Northwest. Both Washington and Oregon outlawed hunting cougars with hounds but sell thousands of licenses for regular hunting of cougars every year. Some locals in our area complain about the results they perceive: rebounding cougar populations that have decimated the once abundant elk and deer populations. I haven’t been here long enough to argue. But I would like more historical perspective. How can we be sure what an exploding or declining population looks like when so much has changed over the last 150 years?
Some researchers in Washington state have found that current hunting patterns may be creating so much chaos in cougar populations that it’s increasing the likelihood of dangerous cougar-human encounters in some areas. Some even suggest that a return to limited hunting with hounds could provide a less disruptive method of population control.
I don’t hunt myself but respect those who do it responsibly and safely for food (and I’ve discovered quite a few people in our area who savor cougar meat). I also recognize that when ecology gets wildly out-of-balance, hunting may be a useful management tool (though I’m also skeptical about human attempts to manage the wild). But I’m curious to learn more about natural controls, such as competition and conflict between cougars and wolves. Packs of wolves can and do kill cougars. Some observers note that increasing wolf populations in some areas of the West may be driving cougars to higher elevation, rocky terrain. This may actually be more in keeping with the historic ranges of both species before Manifest Destiny changed the balance of power. I look forward to more research in this area.
A combination of shrinking habitat and indiscriminate hunting led to complete extermination of cougars from the Midwestern and Eastern United States. However, sightings over the last few years suggest that some may be moving back into their former ranges there.
For more information:
High Country News article on some unintended consequences of banning hound hunting of cougars in Washington.
The Cougar Network – a nonprofit working to understand the role of cougars in ecosystems, especially of cougars expanding into former habitats.
An historical review of bounty hunting records to determine the historic ranges of both cougars and wolves in western and plains states of the U.S.
Ralph Maughan’s Widlife News – many posts on wolves, but also documents wolf and cougar interactions and a lot of other great new on wildlife in the West.
Recent Comments