The blog of the Cougar Rewilding Foundation
Posted in California, Co-existence, Education, Monitoring, Preservation, Radio Collar Tracking on Apr 18th, 2013
Surrounded by several million people, the Santa Cruz Mountains along the Bay Area peninsula – an area about half the size of the 700,000 acre Catskill Park in southern New York State - supports about 30 adult cougars and 40 kittens. The Santa Cruz’s largest protected area is the 18,000 acre Big Basin Redwood State Park. [...]
Posted in California, Co-existence, Education, Government Agency, Preservation, Radio Collar Tracking on Apr 16th, 2013
The Santa Ana Mountains of Southern California between LA and San Diego maintains a cougar population despite continued poaching, roadkills, fragmentation and habitat loss. One of the first urban cougar populations ever to be studied, twenty years later, Paul Beier’s Santa Ana cats are still holding their own. Orange County Register
Posted in Co-existence, Education, Hunting, Livestock attacks, Preservation, Washington on Feb 27th, 2013
Washington State University’s Large Carnivore Conservation Lab has provided 15 years of research on cougar social dynamics. As we’ve pointed out previously, their results have demonstrated how sport hunting (which tends to target ordering big toms) shreds the cougar’s social network and increases conflicts with pets, livestock and us. The conclusion to this video, which [...]
Posted in Government Agency, Hunting, Nebraska, Preservation, Recolonization, USFWS on Jan 26th, 2013
The first female cougar has been documented east of the Nebraska Pine Ridge population, along the Niobrora River Valley, part of which is managed by the US Park Service and the USFWS. As Nebraska considers its first hunt, the feds have an obligation to ensure that any nascent breeding cougar populations are protected. NEBRASKAlandMAGAZINE.com LINCOLN, [...]
Posted in Education, Government Agency, Hunting, Preservation on Jan 21st, 2013
In an essay echoing our most recent newsletter, hunter, ecologist and essayist George Wuerthner details what’s wrong with state management of predators, a sentiment shared by cougar hunter Bob Speirs here. We’ll offer alternatives to Pittman-Robertson funding and how to more equitably reform this mess in our next newsletter. The Wildlife News State Agency Game [...]
Posted in Hunting, Other Large Cats of the World, Preservation, Texas on Jan 21st, 2013
The Dallas Safari Club and a host of distinguished signatores support limits on African lion takes based on lion population dynamics. Washington State has recently adopted a similar limit on cougars based on research done at Washington State University. Such an endorsement from the DSC closer to home might begin to stem the tide of [...]
Posted in Co-existence, Cougar Rewilding Foundation, Decline of Eastern Forests, Deer Problems, Eastern Cougar, Education, New York, Preservation on Jan 8th, 2013
For Immediate Release, January 8, 2013 Contact: Dr. John Laundre’, SUNY Oswego, (315).529.3759 Christopher Spatz, Cougar Rewilding Foundation, (845).377.1034 Adirondack Park Could Support 350 Cougars Mountain Lions Would Restore Biodiversity to Ancestral Home CAMBRIDGE, Eng. – Re-evaluating a thirty year-old Adirondack cougar habitat study, the international conservation journal Oryx today published pioneering ecologist Dr. John Laundré’s The Feasibility of the [...]
Posted in Hunting, Preservation, S. Dakota on Dec 27th, 2012
The controversial 2012- 2013 South Dakota cougar hunt begins on December 27th. The Cougar Rewilding Foundation, Mountain Lion Foundation, the Cougar Fund and other cougar advocates argued that SDFG&P’s revised cougar census for the Black Hills’ National Forest was conveniently raised as a thinly veiled excuse to simply kill more cougars, not a reflection of [...]