Biologist: Cougars should return to eastern United States
Wellsville, N.Y. —
Set aside, for a moment, the controversial question of if cougars are present in New York State.
Whether they are or not, should they be here?
That was the question posed by biologist John Laundre at a discussion in Wellsville’s David A. Howe Public Library last week.
The answer is a resounding “yes,” Laundre told a large crowd in the Nancy Howe Auditorium.
Laundre, currently a professor at SUNY Oswego, has been studying cougars in the field since 1987. On his drive into Allegany County for the presentation, he noted that the region possesses ideal cougar habitat.
While Western New York’s mixture of dense forests, open fields and abundant wildlife may be inviting to cougars, what has led Laundre to the conclusion that state residents should actually invite the big cats back into the area, long after they vanished from the land more than 100 years ago?
Ecological role
Laundre began by giving the audience a glimpse into animal behavior — specifically, the relationship between predators and prey, and the resulting impact that this give and take has on the landscape.
He described the optimal foraging theory, which basically holds that animals know what they’re doing when they go about finding a meal. Just like in a human home, habitat and food resources aren’t evenly distributed, instead occurring in patches. The kitchen contains a bounty, and maybe there’s some snacks sitting around the living room.
Animals, however, have to balance the benefits and costs of obtaining their food in an extreme manner. To extend the analogy, they have to worry about a predator lurking in the crevice next to the refrigerator, or under the kitchen table. Perhaps they dash in and out, or warily stick to the edge of the room. Studies have shown that animals leave more food on the proverbial table in riskier areas, Laundre said.
He then pointed to the impact wolves had on elk in Yellowstone National Park when the predators were reintroduced in 1995 after a 40-year absence. Before the wolves returned, Laundre likened watching elk to a Disney movie, with calves frollicking about.
The scene had changed demonstrably a few years later, after elk adjusted to the wolves’ presence. Laundre compared the change to “two different countries, one at peace and the other at war.” Calves were no longer merrily playing in the open. Scientists measured an initial spike in the vigilance level of the elk before it leveled off as they got used to this new (old) foe.
This change impacted the land. Wolves prefer to attack in the open, so the land usage of the elk shifted to forest edges. Fear is a real behavior, Laundre said, and it has the power to impact individuals and entire populations.
What does the tale of the wolf and the elk have to do with cougars in New York State?
Without significant predators, prey species can have the same effect on a landscape as cows, relentlessly chewing away at the earth with no threat of predation. The overabundance of white-tailed deer can threaten the sustainability of eastern forests, Laundre said, with the potential to change the forest ecology.
Laundre pointed to how a piece of forest that has been fenced off from any hungry mouths quickly becomes a wellspring of biodiversity when compared to the surrounding area. Rarely seen wildflowers and young trees begin to take root where they would have been vacuumed up for sustenance.
Though it might be hard to fathom today, white-tailed deer were nearly eradicated in New York State by settlers. They returned in full force in the latter half of the 20th century, but their chief predators — cougars and wolves — didn’t return with them.
“Deer have returned to a landscape without their predators, a landscape without fear,” Laundre said. “There’s a place for deer and elk, but they have to be kept in their place.”
Laundre then took the audience back to Yellowstone, where the plants and shrubs responded to elk being afraid to hang out in certain areas because of the threat of wolves. The interconnected relationship between deer, cougars and the earth in eastern forests could be similar.
In essence, Laundre said, large predators are like shepherds and “gardeners, keeping the deer in their ecological role … There is no doubt the eastern ecosystem needs cougars.”
Cougars in the Adirondacks?
If cougars do belong in the region, a natural question is where to put them.
Laundre pointed to New York’s vast Adirondack State Park, which is nearly three times larger than Yellowstone, as an ideal place to begin any repopulation efforts.
“If they can’t make it there, they can’t make it anywhere,” Laundre said.
He did the math in an effort to determine if the Adirondacks could support a viable cougar population. He estimates there is approximately 110,000 deer in the park. Using a high estimate of 42 deer taken per cougar in a year, Laundre’s estimations concluded that there is easily enough deer reproduction to support between 200-400 cougars.
He went on to point out that there is actually more cougar habitat in the east than the west, where cougars currently dwell, stating that a traveler could walk from Maine to northern Florida without ever leaving the shade of a forest canopy overhead.
Living with cougars
The necessary land and food might be readily available, but are humans in the eastern United States willing to live in cougar country for the first time in over a century?
Perhaps even more than the science, the social impact of cougars reclaiming their former habitat will determine if it ever becomes a reality. Cougars have often been given a bad reputation — anyone who read Where the Red Fern Grows in grade school can attest to that — but Laundre said the facts on the ground don’t necessarily match up to that menacing popular image.
He caught 140 cougars of all ages and sizes during his time in the field, often using dogs to tree the cats before tranquilizing them. He once stumbled upon a family of cougar kittens when he was alone in the forest. Surprised, he quickly looked around for their mother.
He spotted her in a tree a short distance away. After a few shouts and waves, the mother fled from sight rather than challenge the intrusion.
“They just don’t seem to have an aggressive bone in their body toward us,” Laundre said.
He cited a number of statistics, stating that 10 people were killed in cougar incidents from 1991-2003. In contrast, more people were killed by deer, dogs, snakes and black bears, with automobile collisions with deer easily outdistancing the rest. Between 1999 and 2003, 23 people died from Lyme disease, as opposed to three deaths due to cougars. Cougar attacks, however, generated by far the most media coverage, Laundre stated.
Wildlife heritage
Cougars and wolves are part of the wildlife heritage of the east, Laundre said, animals that once played a valuable role in the ecosystem of the region. The large predators were capable of relieving the forest of over-browsing by their primary prey, large herbivores like elk and deer.
They are forest stewards, of a sort, and not all that bad as neighbors go, Laundre concluded.
He then opened up the discussion to a lively question and answer session with the audience, fielding queries about livestock (he’s personally never seen evidence of a cougar attacking and killing a cow or calf) and the color of cougars (jaguars and leopards can appear entirely black; cougars cannot).
With the growth of the coyote population in Western New York, one commenter wondered if adding cougars to the mix might put more of a strain on the deer population than hunters would prefer. Laundre responded that the presence of cougars would likely decrease coyote predation, because they are afraid of the big cats and would steer clear of areas frequented by cougars, which have been known to eat both coyote and fox.
Many questions pertained to anecdotal evidence of alleged cougar sightings in the area. For Laundre, seeing is believing. “We still don’t have evidence that cougars are having what we call a viable ecological level,” he said. “An incident with one animal or two wandering through the landscape isn’t a viable population. Until we have that viable population, ecologically cougars don’t exist in New York state. They can exist as individuals.
“I’m sure a lot of you have indeed seen cougars, but until you can document that — you see them often enough, you get pictures of them, and as they say, they do start showing up dead on the road — that is an indication that there is a growing population. We need that kind of evidence. That evidence doesn’t exist in any of the (eastern) states except Florida. I’d like to see evidence. I throw that out to you. Take pictures, put up camera traps, and send in the pictures.”
Laundre is affiliated with the Cougar Rewilding Foundation, “a non-profit, science-based, volunteer-run conservation organization dedicated to the recovery of cougars to all of their former range east of the Rocky Mountains.”
To learn more, visit www.cougarrewilding.org
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