By Karen Povey, WNPF Board Member
Encountering wildlife is a highlight for many visitors to Washington’s national parks. While it’s not difficult to catch a glimpse of elk, marmots, or even a bear, one creature that commonly roams our parks is not so easy to spot – the cougar. There are estimated to be about 3,600 cougars in Washington, but wild encounters with this elusive creature are very rare and their habits remain mysterious. But a collaborative research program underway on the Olympic Peninsula is now working to reveal the cougar’s secrets.
Kim Sager-Fradkin, Wildlife Program Manager for the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, joined Washington’s National Park Fund for a Virtual Field Trip to talk about the Olympic Cougar Project. As Kim explained, the story of cougar research on the Olympic Peninsula is a story of connections built among a partnership of tribes, universities, and conservation non-profits as well as connections across boundaries of state, federal, and private lands. (While this project doesn’t operate in Olympic National Park itself, study animals constantly move in and out of the important habitat the park provides.)
This project is co-managed by the non-profit group Panthera and Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, with participation from the Port Gamble S’Klallam, Elwha Klallam, Jamestown S’Klallam, Skokomish, Quinault, Makah. Additionally, the WA Department of Transportation, University of Idaho, and University of Montana. This is a result of the tribal community’s shared goal to collaboratively study and manage wildlife on the Peninsula. Although tribes ceded ancestral lands here through treaties with the federal government in the 1800s, they retained the right to manage wildlife resources, including for subsistence hunting – an important priority for tribal members.
The Olympic Cougar Project is a comprehensive program to learn about the population dynamics and behavior of these secretive cats. One fundamental question: how many cougars are out there? But how do you count such an elusive and wide-ranging predator? By sniffing them out! Project team members include canine super sleuths, trained to locate the specific scent of wild cat scat.
Over three years (2018-2020) in a study area north of Lake Crescent, teams from Rogue Detection Dogs found and collected 168 cougar scats. So, what’s the scoop on all that poop? Samples were analyzed at the University of Idaho by Cameron Macias, a Lower Elwha Klallam tribal member and graduate student studying cougar genetics. As feces travel through the animal’s digestive tract, they incorporate shed intestinal cells that can be recovered in the lab. Extraction of genetic material from the cells confirms the species and even allows the identification of individual animals. Cameron’s evaluation showed the scats represented a minimum of 24 unique individuals within the study area, though a density estimate is still in the works.
Scat analysis is just one way to count cougars and works best in a focused area under good weather conditions for field activities. To cover more ground, the project also deploys wildlife cameras that remotely document the presence of cougars and other wildlife in the region. During spring and summer, staff from partner tribes, with the assistance of community science volunteers set up and maintained a grid of 500 cameras covering over 3,060 square miles.
The result? LOTS of photos and videos, in fact, hundreds of thousands of images! Wading through all these photos to identify the species of animals caught on camera is a gigantic, time-consuming task if done by people. Fortunately, new AI software provided by Panthera, a wildcat-focused conservation group partnering on the project, can rapidly scan and classify the images. Cameras also capture videos that document all sorts of behavior such as feeding and interactions with cubs.
An additional benefit of using cameras is that they capture way more than just cougars. Project partners are interested in understanding the population dynamics of other wildlife that share the cougar’s habitat. This study has resulted in a photo database of cougars and five other species with cultural importance to the tribes: bobcat, black bear, elk, deer, and coyote. Statistical modeling software uses the camera data and grid maps to determine population estimates for each species.
Knowing cougar numbers is just one element of understanding their habitat needs and conservation challenges. For a detailed look into the daily lives of cougars, researchers employ radio tracking technology allowing them to “spy” on the cats in real time and learn how they move through the landscape. Using hounds to track and tree cougars, project partners safely anesthetize and outfit the cats with radio collars – over 90 collared so far with 44 currently under active monitoring. Each collar sends researchers one location point per hour, providing a comprehensive track of where cats go and when they are on the move.
Young animals looking to establish their own home ranges provide especially valuable data. One 18-month-old cougar, named Bjorn, was tracked as he became independent. Bjorn left his original home near Quilcene, eventually traveling 1165 miles as he traversed the entire peninsula before eventually entering the national park and settling in the Elwha area.
Understanding wildlife movements like those of Bjorn is especially important on the Olympic Peninsula where barriers such as Interstate 5 and the Columbia River prevent natural dispersal. Recent studies of Washington cougars show that cougar genetic diversity on the Peninsula is poor compared to populations in other parts of the state. This is likely primarily due to the lack of safe corridors that would allow Peninsula cougars to intermix with other populations.
The Olympic Cougar Project has also deployed 120 wildlife cameras in partnership with the Washington Department of Transportation along highways to see if there are certain locations most frequented by traveling animals. The results will be valuable for identifying potential locations for installing wildlife crossings to allow safe passage over or under highways.
It will be exciting to learn more about the lives of Olympic Peninsula cougars and see how these studies can translate to conservation action as the research continues. Our huge thanks go out to Kim for sharing this project with the friends of Washington’s National Park Fund. And we extend our deepest appreciation to all the partners involved in this important work.
Washington’s National Park Fund donors support a wide variety of wildlife conservation and research projects within our three national parks. To learn more or make a donation to advance science in the parks, visit the projects that we are currently fundraising for.
Cover photo by Mark Elbroch, Panthera. Images in the blog provided by Kim Sager-Fradkin.