The Cougar Whisperer
Jul. 14—Before groundbreaking work done by an up-and-coming Idaho researcher, little was known about cougars.
The majestic and secretive cats were regarded as vermin and indiscriminate killers.
"The general feeling was that if they weren't killed at every opportunity, they would get so thick they would kill everything in sight," said Maurice Hornocker, a renowned wildlife researcher who lives at Bellevue, Idaho. "There was no life history information."
But in 1964, as a graduate student, Hornocker embarked on what would become a 10-year study of cougars in the Big Creek drainage, part of the remote Middle Fork of the Salmon River country. Back then it was known as the Idaho Primitive Area. Today it is federally protected as the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area.
His work unraveled the secret lives of the big cats and established key life history behavior that ran counter to popular perception of the animals. By the time it concluded, cougars were classified as a big game animal in Idaho and the rest of the Western states and subject to regulated hunting and professional management, the same as deer, elk and other species.
But changing minds wasn't easy and some of the myths and negative perceptions of cougars persist to this day.
Hornocker, now 92, has detailed that journey in a memoir — "Cougars on the Cliff: One Man's Pioneering Quest to Understand the Mythical Mountain Lion." Written with retired Tribune reporter David Johnson, 75, (see story, this page) the book covers the early years of the study, his partnership with a reclusive cougar hunter, the politics surrounding the study and Hornocker's life as an aspiring researcher and family man.
His first move was to hire Wilbur Wiles, a resident of Big Creek who hunted cougars to collect the state-issued bounty. The two became close friends and Wiles, who like others of the time regarded cougars negatively, took to the work and soon changed his mind about the animals.
The work was audacious. They hunted during the winter months, pursuing cougars with hounds. When they treed a cat, they would sedate it using a dart gun, climb the tree and lower the drugged but still conscious animal to the ground where it was marked with collars and ear tags. Slowly, by continuing to capture and recapture cougars in Big Creek, they established a cougar numbers and were able to show the population was stable. Hornocker found that adult males kept to themselves.
"Males in stable populations establish territories and practice mutual avoidance," he told the Tribune in a phone interview. "We proved this in New Mexico, we provided it in Yellowstone. We proved it in Jackson Hole. We proved in Glacier that these territories of the resident male hold firm."
During the 10 years of the study, cougar populations remained stable and deer and elk populations expanded. Hornocker said predation was ultimately beneficial to the prey species. The cats tended to cull the old, infirm and young. They also prompted deer and elk herds to move, which kept them from overbrowsing and damaging the very winter range they depended on.
"In other words, deer and elk were good for mountain lions and mountain lions were good for deer and elk," he wrote.
But changing minds wasn't easy. Idaho was the last Western state to reclassify cougars to big game animals. It took some doing and Hornocker, unlike many scientists, joined and even led the political movement to make the change.
Even so, some of the myths and negative perceptions of cougars persist to this day. He worries wildlife management agencies, driven by political pressure, have regressed when it comes to mountain lion management. Idaho removed geographic quotas for mountain lion harvest and has a season with a two-cougar bag limit that runs 10 months. Utah has even more aggressive regulations.
"I'm really distressed with the antipredator movement that has reared its ugly head just in the last couple of years. I've watched it. I didn't think it would take hold but with our political scene — well I needn't go any further there — science is ignored."
Following his study, Hornocker would go on to head the Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit at the University of Idaho and later establish the Hornocker Wildlife Institute at Moscow and study big cats and other carnivores all over the globe. But cougars, because of their remarkable adaptability and their ability to persist despite efforts to wipe them out, remain his favorite.
"As soon as we quit killing them at every opportunity, they increased and spread and they still are, under the management of the last 50 years. And they're headed east, you know, in the Dakotas; one was even killed in Iowa where I grew up," he said. "The adaptability of this animal — they can live in Death Valley. They can live in Los Angeles. They can live on the Olympic Peninsula. They can live in the southwestern desert."
Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2273. Follow him on Twitter @ezebarker.
