Cougar populations in Western Canada are expanding and growing as a result of changing perceptions society has about the large carnivores.
Puma concolor have historically been viewed as pests, said cougar researcher Kyle Knopff at the most recent Wildsmart speaker’s series. But that perception is changing and as a result, management of the species is changing and the animals are expanding where they live.
“Historically, especially since Europeans started settling in North America, there has been really low tolerance for cougars,” Knopff said. “For a long time they were heavily persecuted; they were basically seen as pests and eradicated.”
He said Alberta in particular did a pretty good job at eliminating cougars from the landscape with a bounty in effect until 1964 that pushed the species into the Rocky Mountains.
“But they are now bouncing back,” Knopff said. “We have had changing human perception of large carnivores and that is a big part of it.
“Cougars currently appear to be experiencing population increases and range expansion.”
Prior to European settlement in North America, cougars lived across the continent.
“They have the largest range of any land mammal in the Americas,” Knopff said. “They occur here, they occur in the Amazon and in the Andes. These cats are really adaptable animals that live from North to South America.”
While most active at sunrise and sunset, cougars hunt at all times of the day and are obligate carnivores – in other words they have to eat meat. They can also breed at any time of the year.
“Cougars kill their prey at a pretty short range,” Knopff said. “They typically drag their prey under a tree and they often strip off the hair prior to eating that animal.”
Changes in cougar populations are occurring at the same time as human populations and distribution on the landscape is in flux.
A study Knopff conducted with his wife Aliah in Clearwater County included collaring the big cats and tracking their movement between the mountains to the west and the agriculturally dominated landscape to the east.
“What we found, really, is that cougars tended to avoid human features on the landscape a little bit,” he said, adding they avoided pipelines, buildings and roads, but were found in edge habitat where forests meet clearings. “The reason they like that is that is where the ungulates are.”
However, while cougars avoided human features, the need for food was found to override that behaviour as the density of well sites increased in their habitat. Knopff said cougars show a functional response, so when features like well sites are rare they avoid them, but when they become pervasive they figure it out and adapt.
He said cougars are adaptable and learn how to use the landscape with humans on it, so the issue in places like Canmore is not movement through the valley, but minimizing conflict and coexisting.
“The risk from cougars is pretty low, but they still are a consummate predator,” Knopff said, adding they tend to fear humans. “Can we tolerate them? How close are we willing to live with these actually dangerous large carnivores?”
While perceptions of cougars have changed management actions, the general public is still predisposed to worry about encountering a cougar. Another study of perceptions showed 27 per cent of people thought there was a higher probability of being attacked by a cougar than being in a car accident.
“There can be this disconnect between perceived risk and actual risk and that perception can really drive what you are going to do about an animal and how you are going to manage an animal,” Knopff said. “Tolerance will increase if conflict is reduced and managing conflict takes a lot of work and sometimes hard choices.
“Some management actions will be necessary to limit conflict and this is just a fact of having people and cougars living together.”
Knopff said if cougars figure out dogs are a good source of food or begin displaying behaviours where they might be thinking of people as prey – those individual animals will have to be removed.
But it isn’t just pets that attract predators into places like Canmore, as large elk and deer populations and feral rabbits are also sources of food.
Way to avoid conflict and coexist with cougars, he added, is to restrict pedestrian access to wildlife corridors and keep dogs on leash.
