Proceedings of the fifth mountain lion workshop: 27

PROCEEDINGS OF THE FIFTH MOUNTAIN LION WORKSHOP 77
mountain lions, the flora and fauna of mountain lion habitat,
and conservation issues in the Fort Huachuca-Canelo Hills
region.
A standard method has been developed and is applied
to all the track counts on Fort Huachuca and Canelo Hills.
The routes are covered early in the morning, soon after
sunrise, in order to avoid the midday heat and to take
advantage of the low-angle morning sunlight. Direct, bright
overhead lighting renders the already-faint tracks almost
invisible. Routes are not prepared (e.g., dragged) prior to the
survey. In the absence of rain, a fine dust layer typically
forms on the routes, providing an ideal tracking surface.
Based on the results of repeating the route surveys during the
Fort Huachuca track count, we have found that tracks typically
persist as long as a week in dry weather and, ideally, the track
counts are conducted after several days of no rain. Tracks and
sign of lions, bobcats, coatimundi, and bears are recorded.
High-quality tracks are recorded on a glass plate and
transferred to paper. Ideally, one front and one rear track are
traced. A set of standard track measurements are made and
recorded for each track. When possible, stride measurements
are also made. As discussed below, continued quality control
problems with the tracings have lead to the additional
procedure of photographing the tracks. Recently, the
positional location of the tracks are recorded with a hand-held
Trimble GPS unit and transferred to a topographic map for
spatial analysis. In the case of lions, an attempt has been
made to classify tracks according to sex and age but, with the
exception of tracks made by mature males or of tracks that are
obviously too small to have been made by an adult lion, this
information is very uncertain.
FORT HUACHUCA
The Fort Huachuca Track Counts began in 1989 as an
extension of a larger reconnaissance of lion sign conducted by
the Arizona Game and Fish Department (AGFD). A team of
AGFD employees including Harley Shaw, Norm Woolsey,
Jim Wegge, and Ron Day, surveyed lion sign density in a
variety of habitats across the state (Shaw et al. 1988). Since
1989, the track count has been conducted yearly on the Fort
Huachuca Military Reserve (FHMR) in southeastern Arizona.
The count started as a cooperative effort between the FHMR
wildlife management personnel and the Research Branch of
the AGFD. After the initial two years, the counts were
conducted by volunteers cooperating with personnel at
FHMR. At present, a number of groups are involved with the
track count, including: General Wildlife Services, Chino
Valley, Arizona; The Phoenix Zoo, Phoenix Arizona; Keeping
Track, Inc., Vermont; and The Sky Island Alliance, Tucson,
Arizona.
The study area covered by the Fort Huachuca track
count is shown in Figure 1. Five routes (labeled A-E)
covering 15.3 miles of route are located in the elevation range
between 5000 and 6500 feet along the northeast face of the
Huachuca Mountains, within FHMR. All of the routes lie
within the encinal vegetation zone described by Wallmo
(1955), which includes the oak woodland, woodland
chaparral, chaparral with conifer, and pine-oak woodland
habitats. These habitats likely support high deer densities, and
probably constitute most of the hunting area for lions. From
these habitats, lions can easily move upward to cliffs and
brushy ledges to bed sites. It is likely that lions spend more
time in these areas than in the lower elevations on the FHMR.
Because the Fort Huachuca track count has been an evolving,
informal reconnaissance rather than a formal survey, the
number and length of routes used in the effort has changed
over the years (Table 1). The five routes shown in Figure 1
were established as the principal surveying routes in 1994.
The five routes were not selected on the basis of any
established process (e.g., randomization). Rather, they were
selected for characteristics that facilitate track counts,
including relatively good substrate for seeing tracks,
avoidance of excessively steep terrain and, based upon earlier
counts, a history of track presence. The routes are surveyed
by separate teams starting at opposite ends of the route, thus
requiring each team to cover less than 2 miles in one direction
during each survey.
It should be noted that the lion habitat encompassed
by FHMR probably does not constitute a full home range for
even one lion. The tracks and other sign documented during
the track count are not sign of animals living full-time within
the FHMR boundaries, but rather animals that use the FHMR
for a portion of their range but also spend some percentage of
their time on surrounding areas. While it is difficult to make
an exact measure of the available lion habitat of the FHMR,
approximately 35 mi 2 of chaparral, woodland, and forest
habitat exist above the 5000-foot level, which likely
constitutes the bulk of the lion habitat. Thus we estimate that
an average of 2 to 4 adult lions are located on the FHMR on
any given day, based upon densities of lions found in other
studies, and assuming that lions socially regulate their
numbers as suggested by Hornocker (1970). These would not
necessarily be the same lions at any given time, but would
instead result from perhaps 6-8 adult lions ranging into home
areas that use both peripheral areas and portions of the FHMR.
A much greater area of lion habitat exists outside the FHMR
boundaries on the Huachuca Mountains than occurs within
these boundaries.
The track count information collected since 1989 is
summarized in Table 1. Between 1989 and 1993, routes were
run only once during the survey period. Beginning in 1994,
routes were covered twice with an interval between 3 and 5
days. Track densities varied considerably over the 6 years of