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

Most agencies collected useful and pertinent data on cougar depredations (date, location,
species attacked, data on cougar if dispatched). However, only half the agencies
collected data on contributing factors that may have led to the depredation.
Understandably, identifying the factors that may contribute to a depredation is a science
in itself and field personnel seldom receive training on kill-site investigation or in
subsequent media response when present. This may explain why almost 2/3 of agencies
employ the help of Wildlife Services and hunters from the private sector to respond to
depredation situations. While this may be an effective means of removal, it may not
always remove the animal that depredated, may not identify the contributing factors, and
ultimately may not result in a solution to avoid a recurring problem. Agencies may want
to consider training programs for in-house specialists to provide the response, suggestions
for avoidance, and work to educate members of the public affected by depredation. This
would help to insure that a consistent message is delivered to affected landowners, may
improve accurate agency record keeping, and may result in a more effective partnership
with the public.
Cougar-Human Conflict
The identification of species commonly depredated across all jurisdictions can be used to
help agencies narrow education efforts to reduce livestock depredation and associated
conflict. For example, both northwest and southwest agencies identified sheep and goats
as the top 2 livestock species depredated and the majority of agencies reported that spring
was the season when most depredations occurred. Therefore, agencies may want to focus
education efforts on sheep and goat producers and do so in winter when producers are
preparing for reproduction. Similarly, pet depredation was common across all
jurisdictions and occurred overwhelmingly during winter and agencies may want to focus
education efforts focused in fall when it would be most beneficial (similar to addressing
bear conflict education in spring when bears emerge from dens).
Capture and relocation of cougars involved in public safety incidents (other than
depredations) was not a common management technique and agencies reported they
utilized the technique sparingly. The overwhelming majority of agencies did not feel
relocation was an effective management technique (only 1 agency said it was effective).
Overall, it was unclear to us the criteria agencies were using to make the determination
that relocation was not effective. When relocation was performed, only 7 agencies
always marked individuals and only 2 always monitored relocated cougars. In addition,
the definitions agencies used to describe what constituted a public safety situation (thus
removal of individuals) ranged from a perceived threat to a human attack. It appeared
that public input in some jurisdictions was resulting in more use of relocation, and in
others there was outright public demand to explore relocation instead of lethal removal.
For example, in California, where law prohibits hunting, much of the public would like to
see translocation used more, but policy generally prohibits translocation. Relocating
cougars into occupied range may result in intraspecific strife so we recommend more
work be conducted by agencies to test the hypothesis that local relocation (within that
animal’s average home range) may be an effective management technique. It may also
be beneficial for agencies to examine their public safety definitions and work with other
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