Instead of reducing conflicts between cougars and humans, heavy hunting seems to make the problems worse, says a WSU researcher.
By Sandi Doughton
Seattle Times science reporter
By Sandi Doughton
Seattle Times science reporter
North America's largest cat
The name: Cougar, mountain lion and puma are names for the same animal: Puma concolor.
Size: Adult males average 140 pounds; females average about 100 pounds.
Age: Cougars can live more than 12 years.
Habitat: Found in forested mountain and canyon country. Males can range over 150 square miles. Female ranges are half that size.
Numbers: An estimated 2,500 to 4,000 cougars may live in Washington, but numbers are uncertain.
Prey: Their preferred prey are deer and elk. A large male will kill a deer or elk every nine to 12 days and feed off it for several days.
Fascinating facts: Known for their strength, cougars can leap 30 feet from a standstill. Over the past 100 years, cougars killed one person in Washington and attacked 15.
Source: Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
Size: Adult males average 140 pounds; females average about 100 pounds.
Age: Cougars can live more than 12 years.
Habitat: Found in forested mountain and canyon country. Males can range over 150 square miles. Female ranges are half that size.
Numbers: An estimated 2,500 to 4,000 cougars may live in Washington, but numbers are uncertain.
Prey: Their preferred prey are deer and elk. A large male will kill a deer or elk every nine to 12 days and feed off it for several days.
Fascinating facts: Known for their strength, cougars can leap 30 feet from a standstill. Over the past 100 years, cougars killed one person in Washington and attacked 15.
Source: Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
CLE ELUM, Kittitas County — Jane the cougar is having a bad day.
Ben Maletzke, the cougar biologist, couldn't be happier.
After days of chasing the crafty animal, his team of hounds finally ran her up a tree where Maletzke could take aim with his tranquilizer gun.
Now, the predator powerful enough to take down a bull elk is lying helpless under a tent of fir trees while Maletzke replaces the batteries in her radio collar, checks her teeth and measures her girth.
Jane is part of a healthy cougar population that lives in relative harmony with its human neighbors in the rapidly growing communities just east of Snoqualmie Pass.
In the past six years, Jane has killed deer less than 50 paces from homes — yet residents don't even realize she's there. She has never harmed pets or livestock, nor have any of her offspring.
The story is different in northeastern Washington, where the state has stepped up hunting in response to soaring numbers of complaints about cougars, including two attacks on toddlers. A bill signed by Gov. Christine Gregoire last week could expand the cougar killing.
But startling results from studies such as Maletzke's question this traditional approach to cougar management.
Instead of reducing conflicts between cougars and humans, heavy hunting seems to make the problems worse, says Robert Wielgus, Maletzke's graduate adviser and director of Washington State University's Large Carnivore Conservation Laboratory.
"It goes against the grain of what we've been doing for decades," Wielgus says.
Killing large numbers of cougars creates social chaos, Wielgus and his students found. Trophy hunters often target adult males, which act as a stabilizing force in cougar populations. The adults police large territories and kill or drive out young males. With the grown-ups gone, the "young hooligans" run wild, Wielgus says.
"Every time you kill a dominant male, about three of these young guys come for the funeral."
Evidence suggests cougars under two years of age, just learning to live on their own, account for the majority of run-ins with people and domestic animals. "You don't get to be an old cougar by doing stupid stuff like hanging out in backyards and eating cats," Wielgus says.
In the Selkirk Mountains at the confluence of Washington, British Columbia and Idaho, Wielgus and his students discovered the cougar population was actually crashing at a time when everyone assumed it was booming — because complaints were off the charts.
Hunters had killed all the older males. Then they targeted adult females, whose numbers were plummeting. "About all that was left were these teenagers, and that could well be the reason there were so many complaints — even though there weren't many cougars," Wielgus says.
Another project focused on a smaller area in the Colville National Forest, also in northeastern Washington, where the state opened emergency hunts to reduce cougar numbers in response to complaints. But the cougar population didn't drop at all. Instead, young males from a hundred miles around moved into the territories vacated when adults were killed.
"The only change is that the problematic component — the younger males — increased," Wielgus said.
By contrast, the cougars Maletzke studies along the Interstate 90 corridor have been subject to light levels of hunting. Yet conflicts are rare.
"When you've got a population of smart, resident cats, that's a stable situation," he says.
The number of cats killed by hunters in Washington has climbed in recent years, exceeding levels in the 1950s when the state paid a $75 bounty to encourage eradication.
Before 1996, hunters killed an average of 156 cougars a year. Since the initiative, the harvest rate increased more than 40 percent, to an average of 225 animals a year.
That's because state wildlife managers, worried cougars would proliferate when hound-hunting ended, liberalized the rules for so-called "boot" hunters: Those who walk or drive the woods primarily in search of deer or elk.
The state raised the bag limit to two cougars, doubled the length of the season, and cut the cost of a cougar tag to $10. Before the initiative, the state issued about 600 cougar permits annually. Now, more than 60,000 hunters have license to kill cougars every year.
State lawmakers also enacted several bills to allow hound hunting in counties where complaints about cougars killing livestock or menacing people were high — leading to the heavy kill rate in northeastern Washington.
One unintended consequence of the new rules is a growing toll on female cougars. Whereas hound hunters selectively targeted large males, or toms, "boot" hunters tend to shoot any cougar they run across.
"Killing big adult males is not a good thing," Wielgus says. "But once you start killing off females, there's nowhere to go but down."
The state is revising its game-management plan and considering quotas to reduce the number of female cougars killed, says Donny Martorello, carnivore-section manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The agency also is weighing the research that suggests heavy hunting may aggravate cougar problems but is waiting for more solid evidence, Martorello says.
Ben Maletzke, the cougar biologist, couldn't be happier.
After days of chasing the crafty animal, his team of hounds finally ran her up a tree where Maletzke could take aim with his tranquilizer gun.
Now, the predator powerful enough to take down a bull elk is lying helpless under a tent of fir trees while Maletzke replaces the batteries in her radio collar, checks her teeth and measures her girth.
Jane is part of a healthy cougar population that lives in relative harmony with its human neighbors in the rapidly growing communities just east of Snoqualmie Pass.
In the past six years, Jane has killed deer less than 50 paces from homes — yet residents don't even realize she's there. She has never harmed pets or livestock, nor have any of her offspring.
The story is different in northeastern Washington, where the state has stepped up hunting in response to soaring numbers of complaints about cougars, including two attacks on toddlers. A bill signed by Gov. Christine Gregoire last week could expand the cougar killing.
But startling results from studies such as Maletzke's question this traditional approach to cougar management.
Instead of reducing conflicts between cougars and humans, heavy hunting seems to make the problems worse, says Robert Wielgus, Maletzke's graduate adviser and director of Washington State University's Large Carnivore Conservation Laboratory.
"It goes against the grain of what we've been doing for decades," Wielgus says.
Killing large numbers of cougars creates social chaos, Wielgus and his students found. Trophy hunters often target adult males, which act as a stabilizing force in cougar populations. The adults police large territories and kill or drive out young males. With the grown-ups gone, the "young hooligans" run wild, Wielgus says.
"Every time you kill a dominant male, about three of these young guys come for the funeral."
Evidence suggests cougars under two years of age, just learning to live on their own, account for the majority of run-ins with people and domestic animals. "You don't get to be an old cougar by doing stupid stuff like hanging out in backyards and eating cats," Wielgus says.
In the Selkirk Mountains at the confluence of Washington, British Columbia and Idaho, Wielgus and his students discovered the cougar population was actually crashing at a time when everyone assumed it was booming — because complaints were off the charts.
Hunters had killed all the older males. Then they targeted adult females, whose numbers were plummeting. "About all that was left were these teenagers, and that could well be the reason there were so many complaints — even though there weren't many cougars," Wielgus says.
Another project focused on a smaller area in the Colville National Forest, also in northeastern Washington, where the state opened emergency hunts to reduce cougar numbers in response to complaints. But the cougar population didn't drop at all. Instead, young males from a hundred miles around moved into the territories vacated when adults were killed.
"The only change is that the problematic component — the younger males — increased," Wielgus said.
By contrast, the cougars Maletzke studies along the Interstate 90 corridor have been subject to light levels of hunting. Yet conflicts are rare.
"When you've got a population of smart, resident cats, that's a stable situation," he says.
The number of cats killed by hunters in Washington has climbed in recent years, exceeding levels in the 1950s when the state paid a $75 bounty to encourage eradication.
Before 1996, hunters killed an average of 156 cougars a year. Since the initiative, the harvest rate increased more than 40 percent, to an average of 225 animals a year.
That's because state wildlife managers, worried cougars would proliferate when hound-hunting ended, liberalized the rules for so-called "boot" hunters: Those who walk or drive the woods primarily in search of deer or elk.
The state raised the bag limit to two cougars, doubled the length of the season, and cut the cost of a cougar tag to $10. Before the initiative, the state issued about 600 cougar permits annually. Now, more than 60,000 hunters have license to kill cougars every year.
State lawmakers also enacted several bills to allow hound hunting in counties where complaints about cougars killing livestock or menacing people were high — leading to the heavy kill rate in northeastern Washington.
One unintended consequence of the new rules is a growing toll on female cougars. Whereas hound hunters selectively targeted large males, or toms, "boot" hunters tend to shoot any cougar they run across.
"Killing big adult males is not a good thing," Wielgus says. "But once you start killing off females, there's nowhere to go but down."
The state is revising its game-management plan and considering quotas to reduce the number of female cougars killed, says Donny Martorello, carnivore-section manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The agency also is weighing the research that suggests heavy hunting may aggravate cougar problems but is waiting for more solid evidence, Martorello says.
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