Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

msar-riders - Re: [MSAR] cougar sightings

msar-riders@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Mounted search and rescue

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Una Smith <una.smith@att.net>
  • To: Mounted search and rescue <msar-riders@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [MSAR] cougar sightings
  • Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:01:00 -0600

In North America, mountain lions used to range across the entire
continent, before they were hunted nearly to extinction. Under
various protections for decades, they have been making a comeback.
They are hunted by permit in some western states, at a rate that
is intended to manage their population size, but apparently use
of those permits is well below quota.

Two categories of cats are dangerous to people: young and very
hungry, and abnormal. Abnormal has several types: habituated
to humans, by being fed or given opportunity to feed from human
habitations; aversely trained by humans (attempts to teach
mountain lions to respect people by catching and abusing them
have had the opposite effect; wildlife managers avoid this by
using drugs to make the animal forget what happened); and rabid.

With population increase comes the need for juveniles to travel
farther in search of new, empty hunting ranges for themselves.
Coyotes have now returned from the west to the eastern seaboard;
mountain lions are not far behind.

My little town has two resident mountain lions in adjacent canyons.
They are very rarely seen. I have spent many days in those canyons
without seeing one. I do regularly see deer and solitary coyotes,
and an elderly donkey in the paddock next door to mine was mauled
last winter by a suspected pack of coyotes. As long as those two
adult cats remain in their territories, I feel safe enough, but if
one dies, I would like to know about and take precautions until we
know the animal that moves in to fill the void.

Una Smith
New Mexico




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page