Human–Cougar interactions in the wildland–urban interface of Colorado's front range

Abstract

As human populations continue to expand across the world, the need to understand and manage wildlife populations within the wildland–urban interface is becoming commonplace. This is especially true for large carnivores as these species are not always tolerated by the public and can pose a risk to human safety. Unfortunately, information on wildlife species within the wildland–urban interface is sparse, and knowledge from wildland ecosystems does not always translate well to human‐dominated systems. Across western North America, cougars (Puma concolor) are routinely utilizing wildland–urban habitats while human use of these areas for homes and recreation is increasing. From 2007 to 2015, we studied cougar resource selection, human–cougar interaction, and cougar conflict management within the wildland–urban landscape of the northern Front Range in Colorado, USA. Resource selection of cougars within this landscape was typical of cougars in more remote settings but cougar interactions with humans tended to occur in locations cougars typically selected against, especially those in proximity to human structures. Within higher housing density areas, 83% of cougar use occurred at night, suggesting cougars generally avoided human activity by partitioning time. Only 24% of monitored cougars were reported for some type of conflict behavior but 39% of cougars sampled during feeding site investigations of GPS collar data were found to consume domestic prey items. Aversive conditioning was difficult to implement and generally ineffective for altering cougar behaviors but was thought to potentially have long‐term benefits of reinforcing fear of humans in cougars within human‐dominated areas experiencing little cougar hunting pressure. Cougars are able to exploit wildland–urban landscapes effectively, and conflict is relatively uncommon compared with the proportion of cougar use. Individual characteristics and behaviors of cougars within these areas are highly varied; therefore, conflict management is unique to each situation and should target individual behaviors. The ability of individual cougars to learn to exploit these environments with minimal human–cougar interactions suggests that maintaining older age structures, especially females, and providing a matrix of habitats, including large connected open‐space areas, would be beneficial to cougars and effectively reduce the potential for conflict.

Human impacts on mammals in and around a protected area before, during, and after COVID‐19 lockdowns

“…Accordingly, prey and mesopredator species may use residential areas near the PA as a shield from larger predatory species. Cougars are known to avoid housing densities above certain limits (Smith et al, 2019 ), and although cougars commonly traverse urban‐wildland gradients (Alldredge et al, 2019 ), cougar mortality is often greater in more developed areas (Moss et al, 2015 ). Likewise, black bears commonly associate with exurban spaces due to anthropogenic resource availability, but face a similar risk of mortality (Braunstein et al, 2020 ; Laufenberg et al, 2018 ), which could potentially provide a shield for mesopredator or prey species.…”

Behavior Change in Urban Mammals: A Systematic Review

“…This inherently introduces limitations in capturing information about how varying levels of urbanization impact behavior change in mammals. Definitions of "urban" in the reviewed studies, and elsewhere, are broad and may not consistently consider factors such as land use, structures, human population density, and impervious surfaces (McIntyre et al, 2008;Bateman and Fleming, 2012;Alldredge et al, 2019;Ellington and Gehrt, 2019). Thus, we were unable to reliably relate specific features of urbanization to observed changes in behavior.…”

Artificial nightlight alters the predator–prey dynamics of an apex carnivore

“…Studies throughout the western US have documented cougar presence in, or exploitation of, anthropogenic landscapes (Robins et al 2019). In these environments, cougars typically avoid direct human interactions (Alldredge et al 2019). However, human presence can influence predation behavior in terms of location, kill rates and time spent feeding on carcasses (Smith et al 2015).…”