IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Blake, L.W.; Gese, E.M. | |
| Predation-specific resource selection by cougars in the Pryor Mountains of Wyoming and Montana | |
| 2014 Conference Proceeding | |
Cougars are an ambush predator whose landscape selection and predation patterns intertwine. Where feasible, modification of landscape features could manipulate predation risk. Our objective was to examine predation-specific resource selection at two different scales (fine and coarse) in the Pryor Mountains of Wyoming and Montana. We visited clusters (n = 388) of GPS locations from 5 radio-collared cougars during 2011 - 2012 to locate prey remains. It is often impossible to identify specific kill locations, so many studies have relied on the characteristics of cache sites to describe kill site characteristics, likely resulting in some inaccuracies. To avoid this, when possible we backtracked from cache locations to kill points and used a fine-scale analysis to examine landscape characteristics within 25 m of these confirmed kill points (n = 30). At this scale, kill sites had lower horizontal visibility and elevations than random sites, and were more apt to be in juniper-mountain mahogany vegetation and less likely to be in grasslands. For our coarse scale analysis of predation risk we used our entire dataset of kills (n = 195) by using the 95% upper cut-off point of the known distances-dragged (94.9 m) to buffer caches sites, thereby creating risk zones which had a high likelihood of containing the kill. We modeled cougar predation site selection by constructing resource selection functions for these risk zones. The top model for summer risk zones consisted of vegetation class, distance-to-water and a quadratic term for slope, while the top model for winter risk zones included vegetation class and elevation. Local wildlife managers who have an interest in reducing predation to bighorn sheep will be able to intersect the predation risk resource selection functions with bighorn sheep habitat to guide habitat modification efforts aimed at increasing horizontal visibility to reduce the risk of cougar predation. |
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