Posted: Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Mountain lions are mysterious creatures that even scientists know
very little about. The animals have been feared and revered, and people
make up their own stories about what the big cats’ lives are like.
But new high-tech footage from the Teton Cougar Project is
clearing up some of the speculation. Never-before-seen videos of cougar
kittens in the wild are offering scientists a rare glimpse inside the
dens of Jackson Hole lions. The footage is helping researchers gather
information about the lives of cougars from their birth until they
strike out alone.
That new insight and
other data about cougar kitten survivorship is the topic of a talk by
Elbroch that will be featured at the Nature Mapping Jackson Hole potluck
at 5:30 p.m. Monday at the Center for the Arts.
“We are currently wrapping up our analysis of survivorship, age-specific survivorship,” Elbroch said.
The Teton Cougar Project
has been looking at two categories of cougar kittens, from birth to 6
months and from 6 to 18 months to see what factors affect their lives. “This work has been going
on for 13 years and for 13 years we’ve been guessing,” Elbroch said.
“We’ve never done the math. We finally have, and the numbers are
shocking, truly, because survivorship is bleak. … It really explains why
the local population has declined for that reason.”
Predation is the main reason the youngest kittens do not survive, he said. “The decline in
survivorship in that age class correlated perfectly with wolf abundance
in the area,” Elbroch said. But, “wolves are not the only ones who
predate on cougar kittens.”
For older kittens there are new threats. Bear and wolf predation remain a factor, but starvation and abandonment hang over them, he said. “It can also include predation at that stage by another mountain lion,” Elbroch said. Kittens in the study have lost their mothers for a variety of reasons. The transition period for kittens starting out on their own is dangerous, he said.
The Teton Cougar Project
has tracked 70 kittens during the past 13 years with radio collars.
Elbroch and his co-workers usually collar the kittens when they’re 5 to 7
weeks old and then use the radio frequency for information. If the
signal doubles in frequency, it means the collar hasn’t moved in 12
hours, he said. “If it’s a good day it slipped it off while playing with littermates,” Elbroch said.
At the moment the state
of Wyoming manages mountain lions on a source-sink population model by
identifying places across the state that have an abundance of mountain
lions, a source, to supply a low-population area, called a sink.
“Teton county is a source,” Elbroch said. However, “we are suspicious that we’re no longer functioning as a source.” The research the Teton Cougar Project is doing helps inform the public and management agencies, Elbroch said. “Our goal is to provide
the data, the actual real-life data … for management agencies to make
decisions on how best to maintain a sustainable mountain lion population
in Wyoming,” he said.
Digital cameras placed in and around dens let the cougar researchers see the cats and learn about their behavior. “They’re beautiful,
they’re charismatic, they live alone,” Elbroch said. “They’re cryptic.
We hardly get to see them, so we don’t really know what their lives are
like. so we make up all sorts of mythology and fantasy to fill the gap,
some of which is terribly wrong, some of which is quite accurate. It
makes it a fun species to work with, fun and frustrating.”
The footage of younger
and older kittens has shown the scientists that cougars are not the
solitary animals they are commonly believed to be. They can be
affectionate, playful and protective. And, of course, any sort of kitten
videos are downright adorable and popular. “We see all sorts of
excitement,” Elbroch said. “It’s the first time anyone’s seen any of
this stuff. We’re really going to show you the secret lives of cats.”
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