Life Sciences Commons^™

Evaluation Of Harvest Indices For Monitoring Cougar Survival And Abundance, Michael L. Wolfe, Eric M. Gese, Patricia A. Terletzky, David C. Stoner, Lise M. Aubry

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

Harvest indices are used by state wildlife management agencies to monitor population trends and set harvest quotas for furbearer species. Although harvest indices may be readily collected from hunters, the reliability of harvest indices for monitoring demography and abundance of the harvested species is rarely examined, particularly amongst large carnivores. The overall objective of this study was to assess whether cougar (Puma concolor) harvest statistics collected by wildlife managers were correlated with changes in cougar demography, mainly survival rates and abundance. We estimated key demographic parameters for 2 cougar populations in Utah over 17 years during which we …