Mountain lions are considered the apex predator of the Mountain West. They used to be present across the entire continent but were heavily hunted within the last 200 years. Not as common, these animals are still around Utah, and sightings are on the rise. We spoke with several experts to uncover the mysterious and misunderstood lives of these animals.
“The cougar is a very common carnivore found in the wildlife communities of the Mountain West. They are widely distributed throughout Utah. Their distribution is highly correlated with mule deer, which are their major prey resource," David Stoner said. He is an assistant professor at the Quinney College of Natural Resources at Utah State University. Stoner has been studying mountain lions and their management for nearly a decade.
“They're masters of disguise. They keep a very low profile, that's part of the reason that they're still widely distributed. Many of these larger carnivores were pretty heavily persecuted during the settlement phase, and there were very intense efforts to reduce or eliminate them altogether," Stoner explained.
Historically, the eradication of mountain lions was for livestock protection, primarily for sheep producers across the state. They have been managed in Utah since the 1960’s, and livestock predation from mountain lions is generally very rare. Aaron Bott, a doctoral candidate in the Wildland Resources Department at USU, works with large predators. He and Stoner explained why we are seeing more mountain lions.
“The human population is growing very quickly. As more people move into Utah and more spaces developed for human use, it makes the landscape more challenging for wildlife to navigate. Also, there's an increased interest in recreation as well and there's more cameras on the landscape," Bott said.
Stoner referenced a recent sighting that happened last month in Logan; a young and healthy female mountain lion was found and captured in a neighborhood by the USU campus. She has since been taken and released in a safer habitat.
“That is a perfect example of the urban wildland interface in which you have houses right up to the national forest boundary. It's wintertime and the deer migrate to lower elevation to avoid deep snows. So, it really should be no surprise that the things that eat the deer are capitalizing on the predictability of where their prey are," Stoner said.
Although they are the state’s apex predator, these cats live extremely solitary lives, which present risks when surviving.
“The mountain lion operates alone, they're not cooperative. Of the natural causes of mortality, getting killed by prey was one of the top causes of death. Hunting is extremely dangerous," Stoner explained.
Because cougars are so cryptic and do not want to be seen, it can be difficult to know how many there are across the state. Darren DeBloois, game mammals program coordinator for Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, was the district biologist in Cache Valley for years prior to his current position. DeBloois has been working with cougars throughout his career.
“We try to estimate trends based on how many mountain lions of different ages we see in the hunting harvest. So, when people harvest a cougar with their hunting permits, they have to check every single one and we pull a tooth from the animal and get several other measurements," DeBloois said.
Similar to counting rings from a tree trunk, DeBloois explained that during this process they study the cross section of a tooth from these hunted lions to estimate their age.
“There are parts of the state where it looks like mountain lions are significantly impacting mule deer numbers [and] keeping those numbers from recovering to historic population levels. We've allowed increased hunting in some of those units to try to make sure that those deer herds could recover," DeBloois explained.
Cougars are considered game animals in Utah. The ability for hunters to remove them and the regulations surrounding harvests have recently changed.
“Last year, House Bill 469 went into effect, which really liberalized the ability for people to harvest mountain lions, and waiting to see what those effects might be," Aaron Bott said.
Cougars live transient lives and can travel very far distances, often referred to as dispersal events. One individual set a record of traveling upwards of 1000 miles. Although events like this may occur across the cougar's range, they are not commonly detected due to lack of reliable GPS data. Kristin Engebretsen recently received her PhD from the Ecology Center and Quinney College of Natural Resources at USU. Her work involved filling several different gaps in our understanding about cougar ecology, including studying adult movement patterns, predation behaviors and kitten survival.
“One of the main objectives of my dissertation work was to estimate cougar kitten survival because we don't really know much about the period between birth and about six months because they're really hard to study," Engebretsen explained.
Sounds of Engebretsen and her team collaring kittens in the field.
Engebretsen's research was conducted with project lead Julie Young, associate professor at the Quinney College of Natural Resources at Utah State, in a multi-year study on cougars across three sites.
With the assistance of local hunters, Engebretsen has been able to track down and study “49 kittens in the survival model and we had 50 adult cougars collared across the whole study."
Engebretsen and her team put special tracking collars on kittens that had a radio proximity link to the mother’s GPS collar. Through the mothers collar they were able to access information about the collared kittens’ survival without recapturing them.
They gathered data showing cougar mothers behavior is highly variable, and any time mothers leave their kittens alone, the exposed kittens are vulnerable to a myriad of threats.
"What we found is that across the board, experienced moms do have the highest kitten survival. We think that those experienced moms, are older, they have more hunting experience," Engebretsen said.
Engebretsen is in the process of generating a population model aiming to estimate the population growth of cougars in her three study sites. These experts stress that although cougars are present in Utah, it is extremely rare to encounter one when recreating in their habitat.
“The cougars are most active, you know, in the early morning, or in the evenings and at night. I recommend people don't plug earbuds in and sort of block out all the sounds around them," DeBlooin said. "If you do in the very rare occasion come face to face with a mountain lion and it's acting aggressive, don't run, make yourself look big [and] make noise. If you have kids around you, make sure they're close by and pick them up if they're small."
Although cougars may generate a lot of feelings among the public, whether it's fear or amazement, the reality is they are just large but cryptic mammals trying to navigate and live in an increasingly complex world.
Visit the Utah DWR website for information about wildlife and Wild Aware Utah for information on how to safely recreate in their habitat.
