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

Cougar Management Protocols: a Survey of Wildlife Agencies in North
America
Richard A. Beausoleil, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, 3515 State
Highway 97A, Wenatchee, WA 98801, USA, beausrab@dfw.wa.gov
Deanna Dawn, California Cougar Project, 8760 McCarty Ranch Dr. San Jose, CA 95135,
USA ddawn@californiacougar.org
Donald A. Martorello, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, 600 Capitol Way
North, Olympia, WA 98501-1091, USA, martodam@dfw.wa.gov
Chris P. Morgan, Insight Wildlife Management, P.O. Box 28656, Bellingham, WA,
98225, USA, chrismorgan@insightwildlife.com
Wildlife agencies face a formidable task when managing cougar (Puma concolor).
Unlike many other large mammalian species, long-term research studies investigating the
ecology and natural history of cougars are relatively limited and a reliable, affordable
method for enumerating cougar populations has not been reported in the literature.
Throughout their range, the legal status of cougars varies greatly including: federally
listed as endangered (FL, USA); specially protected mammal (CA, USA); protected game
species (most western jurisdictions, USA and Canada) and unprotected (TX, USA and
MX). Many wildlife agencies in the West also manage cougar populations to help meet
management objectives of other species (e.g., bighorn sheep (Ovis spp.), mule deer
(Odocoileus hemionus), and elk (Cervus elaphus). These challenges are further
complicated by the highly social-political charge of cougar issues. Confounding all of
these biological, social, and political issues is the lack of adequate funding to meet these
challenges. With increasing human populations and diminishing habitats, the
amalgamation of managing these factors will become more imperative in the future. For
these reasons, it is critical that researchers and managers regularly communicate cougar
management successes and limitations in an effort to help refine and enhance cougar
management protocols across the species’ range. The objective of our survey was to
compare cougar management protocols throughout North America so agencies could
benefit from the experiences of other jurisdictions and more readily update their own
management protocols. Our information builds on prior survey/questionnaire work
(Anonymous 1984, Green 1991, Tully 1991, Dawn 2002).
Methods
We surveyed wildlife agencies that manage cougar in North America, including 15 States
in the USA (AZ, CA, CO, FL, ID, MT, NM, NV, ND, OR, SD, TX, UT, WY, WA), 2
Canadian Provinces (AB and BC), and 5 jurisdictions in Mexico. States where cougar
presence has been documented but have no known viable cougar populations were not
contacted (AR, IA, MN, MO NE, OK). The self-administered Internet survey
(SurveyMonkey, Portland, Oregon, USA) consisted of 47 questions regarding cougar
management plans, population status, database management, cougar-human conflict,
public safety, capture-relocation, and public education (Appendix A). For the analysis,
we converted all responses to numerical scores. Multiple-choice scores were treated as
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