Proceedings of the Ninth Mountain Lion Workshop - Carnivore ...

9 th Mountain Lion Workshop
Panel Discussion Participants, Questions, and Response Summary
Panelists:
Howard Quigley, Executive Director, Craighead Beringia South
Terry Mansfield, Deputy Director (retired), Idaho Department of Fish and Game
Gary Power, Commissioner, Idaho Fish and Game
Gary Koehler, Wildlife Research Scientist, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
Steve Nadeau, Large Carnivore Manager, Idaho Department of Fish and Game
Linda Sweanor, Interim President, Wild Felid Research and Management Association
(WFA)
Questions for Panel Discussion
1) In the case of continued human urbanization and development in cougar habitat,
how can cougar managers better integrate awareness on multiple planes…such as
land-use planning entities, developers, and the general public?
2) Where do we get the funding to accomplish long-term studies that have the
scientific robustness to affect management and answer our ecological questions?
3) Is it worth considering development of multi-agency, multi-state approaches to deal
with conflicting values, opinions and viewpoints that result in conflict-driven
management? What educational approaches at state or regional levels might be
considered?
4) Given that harvest trends are remarkably consistent across the West, how do you
explain the apparent disassociation with widely varying hunting season
frameworks?
5) Given the consistent trend in declining harvest in most western states, how will this
influence future management and harvest opportunities?
6) How can states standardize DNA collection to have regional, and even continental,
application?
7) Would it be best to have a central depository, or bank, for both disease and genetic
information, and is the Wild Felid Association a good managing entity for this?
8) If you want to reduce the cougar population in a management unit, can it be
effectively done through established harvest limits, or does that just alter the age
structure?
9) What is the best method for integrating source-sink dynamics into cougar
management plans that can stay “current” with annual population changes?
10) Should cougar range expansion into new regions, such as the Mid-West, be
encouraged or discouraged from a social acceptance standpoint? What is the
likelihood of these dispersal trends (especially from the Black Hills) continuing,
given changes in Western cougar populations? Given our experiences in the
West, what is the likelihood of cougar acceptance in the Mid-West?
Proceedings of the Ninth Mountain Lion Workshop
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