https://cpw.cvlcollections.org/files/original/3121369dba1fd6b6a760518000983041.pdf 70dbf85c7e28483112b8f6dfed307a2f PDF Text Text The research in this publication was partially or fully funded by Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Dan Prenzlow, Director, Colorado Parks and Wildlife • Parks and Wildlife Commission: Marvin McDaniel, Chair • Carrie Besnette Hauser, Vice-Chair Marie Haskett, Secretary • Taishya Adams • Betsy Blecha • Charles Garcia • Dallas May • Duke Phillips, IV • Luke B. Schafer • James Jay Tutchton • Eden Vardy �The Journal of Wildlife Management; DOI: 10.1002/jwmg.396 Research Article Cougars Are Recolonizing the Midwest: Analysis of Cougar Conﬁrmations During 1990–2008 MICHELLE A. LARUE,1 Polar Geospatial Center, University of Minnesota, 310 Pillsbury Drive SE, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA CLAYTON K. NIELSEN, Cooperative Wildlife Research Laboratory, Department of Forestry, Center for Ecology, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, IL 62901, USA MARK DOWLING, Cougar Network, 75 White Avenue, Concord, MA 01742, USA KEN MILLER, Cougar Network, 75 White Avenue, Concord, MA 01742, USA BOB WILSON, Cougar Network, 75 White Avenue, Concord, MA 01742, USA HARLEY SHAW, Cougar Network, 75 White Avenue, Concord, MA 01742, USA CHARLES R. ANDERSON, Jr, Mammals Research Section, Colorado Division of Parks & Wildlife, Grand Junction, CO 81505, USA ABSTRACT Although cougars (Puma concolor) were extirpated from much of midwestern North America around 1900, hard evidence of cougar presence has increased and populations have become established in the upper portions of the Midwest during the past 20 years. Recent occurrences of cougars in the Midwest are likely due to dispersal of subadult cougars into the region from established western populations, and may be indicative of further recolonization and range expansion. We compiled conﬁrmed locations of cougars (i.e., via carcasses, tracks, photos, video, and DNA evidence) collected during 1990–2008 in 14 states and provinces of midwestern North America. We separated our study area into 2 regions (east and west), calculated number and types of conﬁrmations, and assessed trends in conﬁrmations during the study period. We recorded 178 cougar conﬁrmations in the Midwest and the number of conﬁrmations increased during the study period (r ¼ 0.79, P � 0.001). Conﬁrmations by state or province ranged from 1 (Kansas, Michigan, and Ontario) to 67 (Nebraska). Carcasses were the most prevalent conﬁrmation type (n ¼ 56). Seventy-six percent of known-sex carcass conﬁrmations were males, consistent with predominantly male-biased dispersal in cougars. More conﬁrmations (P ¼ 0.05) were recorded in the western region ðx ¼ 19:9 � 22:8=yrÞ than the eastern region ðx ¼ 4:3 � 3:1=yrÞ. Seventy-nine percent of cougar conﬁrmations occurred within 50 km of highly suitable habitat (i.e., forest areas with steep terrain and low road and human densities). Given the number of cougar conﬁrmations, the increasing frequency of occurrences, and that long-distance dispersal has been documented via radiocollared individuals, our research suggests that cougars are continuing to recolonize midwestern North America. ß 2012 The Wildlife Society. KEY WORDS cougar, dispersal, Midwest, Puma concolor, recolonization. Cougar (Puma concolor) populations have been largely absent from eastern and midwestern North America since the early 1900s, because of direct persecution and declining prey populations (Sunquist and Sunquist 2002). Since then, cougars have been restricted to the American west, except for the critically endangered Florida panther (P. c. coryi; Maehr et al. 2002). When cougars were reclassiﬁed from a bountied predator to a managed game species in the 1960s and 1970s, populations in the western portions of the continent rebounded signiﬁcantly (Pierce and Bleich 2003). Now, cougars may be expanding into the Midwest from western source populations (Nielsen et al. 2006, Thompson and Jenks 2010, Cougar Network 2011). Received: 9 November 2011; Accepted: 7 February 2012 1 E-mail: larue010@umn.edu LaRue et al. � Cougars Recolonizing the Midwest Currently, 3 breeding populations of cougars exist in the Midwest within 400 km of established cougar range (Fig. 1), all of which were likely recolonized naturally from the West. The Black Hills population became viable in the 1990s (Fecske 2003, Beier 2010, Thompson and Jenks 2010), and has been a primary source for new (post-2005) breeding populations in the North Dakota Badlands (North Dakota Game and Fish Department 2007, Fecske et al. 2008) and western Nebraska (Hoffman and Genoways 2005, Wilson et al. 2010). Long-distance dispersal (Thompson and Jenks 2005, Stoner et al. 2008, Henaux et al. 2011) has facilitated recolonization and range expansion of cougar populations. Recently a male cougar from the Black Hills (its origin was veriﬁed through genetic analysis) dispersed >2,900 km through Minnesota, Wisconsin, and New York before being killed by a vehicle in Connecticut (Cougar Network 2011). The establishment of new breeding populations and 1 �Figure 1. Confirmed cougar locations (n ¼ 178) in midwestern North America during 1990–2008. Dark-shaded represent the population in western United States and established cougar populations in the Black Hills, South Dakota, the Badlands, North Dakota, and northwestern Nebraska. documented instances of long-distance dispersal has provided credibility to the notion that cougars are indeed moving into portions of their historic range in the Midwest. Since the 1990s, cougar occurrences (hereafter cougar conﬁrmations) have been conﬁrmed in the Midwest every year (Nielsen et al. 2006, Cougar Network 2011). This phenomenon has spawned research into potential dispersal corridors and paths (LaRue and Nielsen 2008, Henaux et al. 2011), habitat suitability (LaRue and Nielsen 2011), and human dimensions associated with cougar expansion in the Midwest (Davenport et al. 2010). These analyses suggest that 8% of the Midwest contains highly suitable cougar habitat, suitable dispersal corridors are indeed present, and the public is generally supportive of cougar presence in the region. However, questions remain regarding the number, type, and habitat associations of cougar conﬁrmations in the Midwest, and what insight those conﬁrmations may provide into the issue of potential recolonization. The Cougar Network, a non-proﬁt organization dedicated to monitoring cougar presence east of their range, compiled all known, deﬁnitive occurrences of cougars outside their established range since 1990 (Nielsen et al. 2006, Cougar Network 2011). These data in conjunction with previous research (LaRue and Nielsen 2008, 2011; Thompson and Jenks 2010; Henaux et al. 2011), may lend considerable insight into the issue of cougar recolonization and range expansion throughout Midwest. We analyzed records of cougar conﬁrmations in the Midwest collected by the Cougar Network during 1990–2008. Our speciﬁc objectives were to 1) summarize cougar conﬁrmation records by number, type, and region; 2) characterize trends in cougar con2 ﬁrmations over time; and 3) assess habitat suitability (LaRue and Nielsen 2008, 2011) associated with cougar conﬁrmation locations. METHODS We compiled cougar conﬁrmations recorded during 1990– 2008 in a 3,200,000-km2 portion of midwestern North America. Our study area included North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Manitoba. Conﬁrmation data were provided and veriﬁed by state and/or federal wildlife agencies, and included the county and state where the conﬁrmation was located, date, conﬁrmation type, verifying source, and pertinent notes. When ﬁner-scale location data were available, we included speciﬁc latitude and longitude coordinates of a conﬁrmation. We only considered tangible, physical evidence of a cougar when evaluating potential conﬁrmations, accepting only those veriﬁed by qualiﬁed wildlife professionals (Nielsen et al. 2006, Cougar Network 2011). Cougar sighting data and animals known to be released captives were not included in our dataset. We classiﬁed conﬁrmations into 6 different categories: carcass, video, photo, DNA, tracks, or other tangible, physical evidence of cougar presence, such as wildlife or domestic animal depredation. We carefully excluded conﬁrmation data that were not veriﬁable or were inappropriate given the lack of uniform treatment (i.e., cougar harvest) over the study area. Given their status as containing breeding populations, we excluded conﬁrmations from the Black Hills entirely and The Journal of Wildlife Management �conﬁrmations from western North Dakota from 2006 to 2008 (North Dakota Game and Fish Department 2007, 2010; Fecske et al. 2008). We also excluded conﬁrmations from the North Dakota and South Dakota harvests (North Dakota Game and Fish Department 2010, South Dakota Department of Game, Fish, and Parks 2010). We calculated the total number and type of conﬁrmations per state or province and within the entire study area during 1990–2008. For carcass conﬁrmations, we calculated percentage of males versus females, as this was the only source of deﬁnitive sex information from our dataset. We further separated our study area into 2 regions (Fig. 1) to address spatial trends in areas near established cougar range (i.e., the western region; ND, SD, NE, KS, OK, TX, and Manitoba) versus areas farther away from established cougar range (i.e., the eastern region; MN, IA, MO, AR, LA, WI, MI, IL, and Ontario). We calculated Pearson’s correlation coefﬁcient (a ¼ 0.05 throughout) to assess trends in conﬁrmations over time (years) for the each region and for the entire study area. We determined the correlation between conﬁrmations in the eastern regions versus western regions to assess differences in the spatial extent of potential recolonization. We used a 1-tailed Student’s t-test to examine regional differences in 1) the total number of conﬁrmations and 2) the number of carcass conﬁrmations. We used habitat suitability information for cougars in the Midwest from LaRue and Nielsen (2008, 2011) to determine the proportion of conﬁrmations within highly suitable habitat (i.e., forested areas with steep terrain, and low road and human densities), and to calculate the average suitability of habitat at cougar-conﬁrmation locations. We resampled the habitat suitability map from LaRue and Nielsen (2011) to 1km resolution to account for the size of the study area and potential inaccuracies in spatial locations of conﬁrmations. We did not calculate habitat suitability scores for Canadian provinces because geospatial datasets needed for our model were not concurrent with existing data for the United States. We also calculated average distance to conﬁrmations from habitat patches in the Black Hills, North Dakota Badlands, and the easternmost habitat patches within the entire range of established cougar populations. The easternmost patches were deﬁned as highly suitable (>75%) habitat (LaRue and Nielsen 2011) that were >64 km2, which represents the smallest post-parturition home range of a female cougar (Ross and Jalkotzy 1992); effectively the smallest area that could contain breeding individuals. Patches ranged from North Dakota to Texas (LaRue and Nielsen 2008, 2011). We determined the center of each of the aforementioned habitat patches using ArcGIS 9.3 (ESRI Inc., Redlands, CA) and calculated the distance from the center point of each patch to each cougar conﬁrmation location. We then calculated the average distances from cougar conﬁrmations to the Black Hills, North Dakota Badlands, and easternmost habitat patches separately. We also buffered highly suitable habitat patches throughout the study area by 20 km and 50 km to determine the number of conﬁrmations in proximity to highly suitable habitat. We used distances of 20 km and 50 km to account for potential inaccuracies in location LaRue et al. � Cougars Recolonizing the Midwest data and because cougars can travel approximately 10– 11.5 km/day (Hemker et al. 1984, Dickson et al. 2005). A cougar conﬁrmation within 20–50 km of a suitable habitat patch represents an animal that had likely been using suitable habitat, but our location accuracy (i.e., at the county level) was unable to capture ﬁner detail. RESULTS We recorded 178 cougar conﬁrmations occurring in the Midwest during 1990–2008 (Table 1; Fig. 1). The number of conﬁrmations increased through time (r17 ¼ 0.79, P � 0.001), with the most annual cougar conﬁrmations (n ¼ 32) occurring during the ﬁnal year of the study (Fig. 2). Nebraska had the most cougar conﬁrmations (n ¼ 67) through the study period; Kansas, Michigan, and Ontario reported the fewest (n ¼ 1 each; Table 1). Carcasses were the most prevalent conﬁrmation type (n ¼ 56) and video and live animal captures were least common (Table 2). Of the 38 known-sex carcasses, 76% (n ¼ 29) were male. More conﬁrmations (t14 ¼ 1.76, P ¼ 0.03) were recorded in the western region (x ¼ 19:9 � 22:8=yr; SD throughout) than the eastern region ðx ¼ 4:3 � 3:1=yrÞ. We found a positive correlation (r17 ¼ 0.61, P ¼ 0.001) in the number of conﬁrmations between the 2 regions; number of conﬁrmations increased through time in both regions (Fig. 3). More carcass conﬁrmations occurred in the western region ðx ¼ 6:4 � 5:3=yrÞ than the eastern region (x ¼ 2:2 � 1:1=yr; t11 ¼ 2.59, P ¼ 0.05). Mean habitat suitability at cougar conﬁrmation locations (at the 1-km2 scale) throughout the study area was 65 � 2%; habitat suitability for all counties in the study area containing �1 conﬁrmation was similar (66 � 2%). Average suitability of habitat in counties where conﬁrmations were found was 63 � 3% and 75 � 2% in the eastern and western regions, respectively. Approximately 62% (n ¼ 110) of conﬁrmations Table 1. Number of cougar confirmations (i.e., photo, video, tracks, carcass, or DNA evidence) per state or province in midwestern North America during 1990–2008. These data excluded confirmations within established populations in the Black Hills, confirmations in the Badlands after 2006, and all legally harvested animals. State Nebraska North Dakota Oklahoma Texas South Dakota Missouri Arkansas Louisiana Manitoba Minnesota Iowa Illinois Wisconsin Kansas Michigan Ontario Total n % of Total 67 31 12 12 11 10 8 5 5 5 4 3 2 1 1 1 178 37.6 17.4 6.7 6.7 6.2 5.6 4.5 2.8 2.8 2.8 2.2 1.7 1.1 0.6 0.6 0.6 100.0 3 �35 25 30 20 R² = 0.6293 Confirmations Confirmations 25 20 15 5 0 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 Figure 2. Confirmed cougar locations per year in midwestern North America during 1990–2008, excluding legally harvested animals and confirmations occurring within the Black Hills or in the Badlands after 2006. Confirmed cougar locations included carcasses, live animals, tracks, photographs, video, and DNA evidence verified by wildlife professionals. were within 20 km of a highly suitable habitat and 79% (n ¼ 140) were within 50 km of suitable habitat. Average distance of conﬁrmations from the Black Hills was 664 � 503 km and average distance from the centroids of the 20 patches of habitat within the established range to 178 conﬁrmations in the Midwest was 997 � 507 km (Table 3). DISCUSSION Our ﬁndings lend further credence to Thompson and Jenks (2010), suggesting that cougars are likely recolonizing and expanding their range in the Midwest. We provide 3 novel pieces of evidence to support this conclusion. First, cougar conﬁrmations increased signiﬁcantly in the study area during the last 2 decades, and many of these animals are likely dispersing from the Black Hills. Indeed, genetic and isotopic evidence (Henaux et al. 2011), and data from radiocollared animals (Thompson and Jenks 2010) support this hypothesis. Second, states with the greatest number of conﬁrmations outside the Black Hills were North Dakota and Nebraska, consequently where breeding populations have recently become established (Fecske et al. 2008, Wilson et al. 2010). Table 2. Confirmations of cougars by confirmation type in midwestern North America during 1990–2008. Carcass confirmations consisted of the body of a dead cougar present in the study area; tracks were verified by a state or federal wildlife biologist; camera confirmations were photographs verified by a state or federal wildlife biologist; the designation of ‘‘other’’ for confirmations consisted of wildlife or domestic animal depredations verified as being attributed to a cougar; scat was verified by a state or federal wildlife biologist; the ‘‘animal’’ designation was considered a live animal that was trapped and later released elsewhere; and video confirmations consisted of videographic evidence of a cougar that was verified by a state or federal wildlife biologist. Confirmation type 4 Eastern region R² = 0.3562 1992 1994 1996 n % of Total 56 40 37 19 10 8 8 178 31.5 22.5 20.8 10.7 5.6 4.5 4.5 100.0 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 Year 2008 Year Carcass Tracks Camera Other Scat Animal Video Total Western region 10 5 10 0 1990 R² = 0.6062 15 Figure 3. Annual number of cougar confirmations per region in midwestern North America during 1990–2008. The western region included North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. The eastern region was comprised Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Third, the majority of carcass conﬁrmations (76%) were male. Cougars are capable of traveling long distances (e.g., Oklahoma male: 1,067 km [Thompson and Jenks 2005], Utah female: 1,341 km [Stoner et al. 2008]), and males are the primary dispersers in cougar populations (Ross and Jalkotzy 1992, Sweanor et al. 2000, Logan and Sweanor 2001). Combined, these ﬁndings suggest a continued recolonization and range expansion event of cougars from the West into midwestern North America. Because we found more conﬁrmations in the western regions than the eastern regions of the Midwest, our results provide further evidence that cougar recolonization of the Midwest appears to be proceeding via stepping-stone dispersal. Stepping-stone dispersal adheres to island biogeography theory (MacAthur and Wilson, 1967), such that a matrix of suitable and unsuitable habitat exists for a dispersing individual, whereby the largest, closest patches are most likely to be inhabited ﬁrst. Speciﬁcally, a stepping-stone disperser moves out of a density-dependent population, stopping at the closest patch of available habitat and examining its surroundings for suitability (e.g., mates and prey) before moving on. For a population to expand its range, both males and females need to disperse from the source (e.g., the Black Hills). Habitat patches that intersect dispersal paths of both males and females is where populations are likely to expand ﬁrst; cougars likely ﬁt the stepping-stone dispersal model because females are far more philopatric, dispersing at lower rates, and distances than males (Lopez-Gonzalez 1999, Sweanor et al. 2000, Maehr et al. 2002, Anderson et al. 2004, Thompson and Jenks 2010). Given this, areas closest to the Black Hills should be recolonized ﬁrst, as our results indicate. Table 3. Mean distances to cougar confirmations in midwestern North America during 1990–2008 from established populations in the Badlands, North Dakota, Black Hills, and South Dakota, and to the 20 easternmost patches of habitat in the west (LaRue and Nielsen 2008, 2011); n corresponds to the number of distance calculations determined per established population. Established habitat patch Badlands Black Hills Western range n x Distance (km) SD 178 178 6,230 864 664 997 582 503 507 The Journal of Wildlife Management �We found the majority of conﬁrmations were within or relatively close to highly suitable habitat, deﬁned as areas comprised primarily forest cover, containing steep slopes, and with low road and human densities (LaRue and Nielsen 2008, 2011). However, we recognize that areas of less-suitable habitat in the study area likely consisted of row crops, which could actually provide suitable cover for dispersing individuals for a few months per year. Our study area contained approximately 8% highly suitable habitat for cougars (LaRue and Nielsen 2011); 62% of all conﬁrmations in our study area were within 20 km of suitable habitat patches and 79% of conﬁrmations were within 50 km of suitable habitat. We are aware of potential inaccuracies in the location data; therefore, we calculated the number of conﬁrmations in proximity to highly suitable habitat patches. Given that cougars are known to use less suitable habitat during dispersal (Beier 1995, Dickson et al. 2005, Thompson and Jenks 2005), it was not surprising that we did not ﬁnd a closer association of conﬁrmations with highly suitable habitat. We recognize several limitations to our study given the nature of the conﬁrmation data. As aforementioned, all potential cougar conﬁrmations were rigorously reviewed by wildlife biologists (Nielsen et al. 2006). Besides carcasses, no conﬁrmation data could be analyzed for sex, age, or DNA information to verify potential sources, and DNA and age of most carcasses were not analyzed. Regardless, we contend these animals were likely dispersers from established populations, and not merely released captives. We also acknowledge that video and camera conﬁrmations may very well represent multiple counts of the same animal moving through the region. For example, the cougar killed recently in Connecticut was deﬁnitively documented in >5 instances (via individual markings in remote camera photos and DNA analysis) in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and New York prior to its vehicle-caused mortality event (Cougar Network 2011). However, given the quality of the carcass data alone, we feel conﬁdent that other types of conﬁrmation data are likely representative of what was found in the carcass data (i.e., primarily subadult males likely dispersing from the Black Hills or other established breeding populations). MANAGEMENT IMPLICATIONS Range expansion of top predators is a relatively new phenomenon in North America, but is not unique to cougars (Thompson and Jenks 2010), as grizzly bear (Ursus arctos), wolf (Canis lupus), coyote (Canis latrans), and black bear (Ursus americanus) populations throughout North America have experienced recent range expansions (Pletscher et al. 1997, Wydeven et al. 1998, Gompper 2002, Pyare et al. 2004). The implications of large carnivores recolonizing portions of North America have been discussed elsewhere and include impacts on trophic dynamics and carnivorehuman conﬂicts (Mladenoff et al. 1997, Mladenoff and Sickley 1998, Gehring and Potter 2005, Rice et al. 2007, Thompson and Jenks 2010). Perhaps the most important concern to wildlife managers regarding cougar recolonization in the Midwest is how the public will respond, given that people have been living without large carnivores there for LaRue et al. � Cougars Recolonizing the Midwest nearly a century. Studies generally suggest that humans have learned to live with long-established predators (Riley and Decker 2000, Teel et al. 2002, Zinn and Pierce 2002, Casey et al. 2005). In contrast, human attitudes regarding cougars in the Midwest are just beginning to be investigated (Davenport et al. 2010). We agree with Beier (2010) and Thompson and Jenks (2010) that enough information exists for wildlife professionals to begin thinking about public awareness campaigns in areas likely to encounter dispersing cougars. Successful conservation strategies will almost certainly require an integrated approach involving management across state boundaries (Sinclair et al. 2001) and careful thought will be needed to accurately inform the public of cougar recolonization in the Midwest (Davenport et al. 2010). Mountain lion response plans are already in place in Nebraska and Missouri (Nebraska Game and Parks Commission 2004, Cougar Network 2011, Wilson et al. 2010), and we suggest that states even farther east consider doing the same. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank the Cougar Network and the Cooperative Wildlife Research Laboratory at Southern Illinois University Carbondale for supporting this research. We appreciate the assistance of >40 state, provincial, and federal agency contacts who evaluated and contributed conﬁrmation information, science advisors B. Watkins, R. Andrews, D. Land, A. Wydeven, and S. Wilson, S. Loch, R. Andrews, D. Hamilton, and M. Lotz. We also thank the Graduate School and College of Agricultural Sciences at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. P. Beier and 2 anonymous reviewers provided comments that strengthened an earlier draft of this manuscript. All authors declare no conﬂicts of interest while conducting this study. LITERATURE CITED Anderson, C. R., Jr., F. G. 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Environment and Behavior 34: 239–256. Associate Editor: Paul Beier. The Journal of Wildlife Management � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Journal Articles Description An account of the resource CPW peer-reviewed journal publications Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Cougars are recolonizing the midwest: analysis of cougar confirmations during 1990–2008 Description An account of the resource Although cougars (Puma concolor) were extirpated from much of midwestern North America around 1900, hard evidence of cougar presence has increased and populations have become established in the upper portions of the Midwest during the past 20 years. Recent occurrences of cougars in the Midwest are likely due to dispersal of subadult cougars into the region from established western populations, and may be indicative of further recolonization and range expansion. We compiled confirmed locations of cougars (i.e., via carcasses, tracks, photos, video, and DNA evidence) collected during 1990–2008 in 14 states and provinces of midwestern North America. We separated our study area into 2 regions (east and west), calculated number and types of confirmations, and assessed trends in confirmations during the study period. We recorded 178 cougar confirmations in the Midwest and the number of confirmations increased during the study period (r = 0.79, P ≤ 0.001). Confirmations by state or province ranged from 1 (Kansas, Michigan, and Ontario) to 67 (Nebraska). Carcasses were the most prevalent confirmation type (n = 56). Seventy-six percent of known-sex carcass confirmations were males, consistent with predominantly male-biased dispersal in cougars. More confirmations (P = 0.05) were recorded in the western region than the eastern region . Seventy-nine percent of cougar confirmations occurred within 50 km of highly suitable habitat (i.e., forest areas with steep terrain and low road and human densities). Given the number of cougar confirmations, the increasing frequency of occurrences, and that long-distance dispersal has been documented via radiocollared individuals, our research suggests that cougars are continuing to recolonize midwestern North America. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. LaRue, M. A., C. K. Nielsen, M. Dowling, K. Miller, B. Wilson, H. Shaw, and C. R. Anderson Jr. 2012. Cougars are recolonizing the midwest: analysis of cougar confirmations during 1990-2008. The Journal of Wildlife Management 76:1364–1369. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/jwmg.396" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://doi.org/10.1002/jwmg.396</a> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource LaRue, Michelle A. Nielsen, Clayton K. Dowling, Mark Miller, Ken Wilson, Bob Shaw, Harley Anderson Jr, Charles R. Subject The topic of the resource Cougar Midwest Puma concolor Recolonization Extent The size or duration of the resource. 6 pages Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2012-06-14 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">In Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Permitted</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource English Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. The Journal of Wildlife Management Type The nature or genre of the resource Article