Cougars in Oregon

General discussions on hiking in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest
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DefianceOrBust
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Cougars in Oregon

Post by DefianceOrBust » April 13th, 2014, 10:07 pm

> The fish and wildlife department last year issued more than 55,000 hunting tags for cougars — up from 588 in 1994 — which accounted for nearly 300 of last year’s cougar deaths, Fahy added. The department says about 5,700 cougars currently reside in Oregon.

http://www.registerguard.com/rg/news/lo ... e.html.csp

If Oregon has 98,380 sq miles, then 5700 cougars would be 1 cougar every 18 square miles, which is equivalent to a square that is 4.2 by 4.2 miles on each side.

EDIT: When I first came across the number 5700, I thought it outlandishly high. But since then, I've read up on the issue and now find it rather reasonable as I explain in this post: http://www.portlandhikers.org/forum/vie ... 0&start=36
Last edited by DefianceOrBust on April 15th, 2014, 9:36 am, edited 2 times in total.

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kepPNW
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Re: Cougars in Oregon

Post by kepPNW » April 14th, 2014, 5:09 am

DefianceOrBust wrote:If oregon has 98,380 sq miles, then 5700 cougars would be 1 every 18 square miles, which is a 4.2 by 4.2 mile square.
That would seem to be so dense as to qualify as over-populated, eh? Particularly given the vast reaches that aren't necessarily good habitat for them.
Karl
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retired jerry
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Re: Cougars in Oregon

Post by retired jerry » April 14th, 2014, 6:19 am

"That would seem to be so dense as to qualify as over-populated, eh?"

Uh oh, this could go downhill quickly :D

One Cougar every 4.2 square mile, except much smaller area given that most of the state is not good habitat.

Amazing you don't see them more. I've only seen tracks. I think they're out there watching us(and stalking us).

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drm
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Re: Cougars in Oregon

Post by drm » April 14th, 2014, 6:37 am

I did a few searches on cougar territory and 16 sq miles is definitely at the low end. I suppose that dense forests with healthy deer population could lead to low territorial sizes, but that is only descriptive of a part of Oregon. It would clearly need to be much larger for vast swathes of eastern Oregon.

raftingdog
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Re: Cougars in Oregon

Post by raftingdog » April 14th, 2014, 7:01 am

no human killed by cougar in Oregon .... male cougars will kill other male cougars hence need a range of 50 sq miles ...law passed by initiative makes use of dogs in tracking cougars illegal, passed twice by voters ...hunters do not like nonhunters messing with their hunting rights.... claim is elk are losing their young to cougars... hence new action to reduce population of cougars

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retired jerry
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Re: Cougars in Oregon

Post by retired jerry » April 14th, 2014, 7:18 am

I can sort of see the perspective of hunters

If you remove the apex predators, and then re-introduce them, there's a chaotic transition period. There was a "Nature" or "Nova" on PBS recently that talked about that.

Although the "funniest" part was an outfitter that said removing wolves was like removing a cancer, "why would you want to re-introduce the cancer?"

pdxgene
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Re: Cougars in Oregon

Post by pdxgene » April 14th, 2014, 7:36 am

And how exactly do they come up with that 5,700 number? Just pull it out of their ***? They could have just as easily said 2,000 or 10,000 to try and make whatever their point was going to be since there seems to be no proof or backup except estimates. As secretive as cougars are, is the state really spending the rather high amount of money it would seem to cost to have public employees do nothing but spend years to accurately count individual cougars? They don't roam in prides after all. It sems like it would take an incredible amount of man hours to actually get a real count.

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retired jerry
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Re: Cougars in Oregon

Post by retired jerry » April 14th, 2014, 7:52 am

But you can estimate. Look at tracks. Use camera. Look at just a few areas and then extrapolate. It probably doesn't matter that much whether it's 2,000, 5,000, or 10,000. Long term trends are more important to know if we're driving them extinct.

I think it's important to get good numbers because we want to know that the population is sustainable. If the numbers are dropping, and they're going towards extinction, we should try to intervene.

It seems immoral for us to just take over the earth and drive all the other animals into extinction.

If you're religious, there's that Noah's ark story - god told him to save all species of animals. God created them. Who are we to kill them off.

If you just want to preserve us humans, all that genetic diversity may at some point save us from some catastrophy.

And nature has figured out how to make a long term sustainable earth. If we kill off apex predators, the consequences are unpredictable, may eventually lead to our demise.

etc.... </soapbox>

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Re: Cougars in Oregon

Post by pdxgene » April 14th, 2014, 8:00 am

retired jerry wrote:But you can estimate. Look at tracks. Use camera. Look at just a few areas and then extrapolate. It probably doesn't matter that much whether it's 2,000, 5,000, or 10,000. Long term trends are more important to know if we're driving them extinct.

I think it's important to get good numbers because we want to know that the population is sustainable. If the numbers are dropping, and they're going towards extinction, we should try to intervene.

It seems immoral for us to just take over the earth and drive all the other animals into extinction.

If you're religious, there's that Noah's ark story - god told him to save all species of animals. God created them. Who are we to kill them off.

If you just want to preserve us humans, all that genetic diversity may at some point save us from some catastrophy.

And nature has figured out how to make a long term sustainable earth. If we kill off apex predators, the consequences are unpredictable, may eventually lead to our demise.

etc.... </soapbox>
But they're using those estimates to justify killing more of them. If there really aren't that many then the amount of hunting tags sold should be dramatically reduced. Look at the thousands and thousands of hours people on this site spend in the wilderness, on trail and off. Yet cougar sightings are still pretty darn rare. I really have doubts that there is nearly as many as is being estimated. Especially if there's no real proof.

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backcountryhunter
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Re: Cougars in Oregon

Post by backcountryhunter » April 14th, 2014, 8:39 am

I have seen 5 cougars in the wild in my 26 years in Oregon.

I think the main reason most people do not see more wildlife is that they do not know how to look for it.

The typical hiker/backpacker stays on trail, head down, slogging up the mountain as fast as they can to get to their destination. Usually with a dog and talking very loudly to their hiking companions. If they see any wildlife it is usually on the trail....running away. BTW there are a lot of pictures of slugs on this site LOL! (from the head down looking at the trail trick.) They do not care about the wind or what they just got finished bathing it the morning before the hike.

Try hiking off trail into the wind with quiet clothes. Take a few steps stop for a minute and scan with the naked eye and then scan again with binoculars. and repeat. Do not use the daily dose of perfume or scented body wash before you go. Leave the dog at home and be quiet. You'd be amazed at what is out there.

The cougar population is an estimate. When they ODFW perform a cougar population count they use hunters data, and they use contract trackers with dogs to tree and count cougars in a given area. It's not that difficult to come up with a population model.

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