HUFFINGTON
09.30.12
WILD KINGDOM
have to be managed or there’s going to be crop damage. The fact
that you eat crops — you are not
co-existing with deer. It’s a fallacy
to think that there can be this utopian harmony with animals. That’s
just not true. At certain levels,
there’s really just tolerance.”
Clay Nielsen, an assistant professor of forest wildlife at Southern Illinois University Carbondale,
is helping to identify which states
might want to begin contemplating tolerance strategies soonest.
Nielsen is the director of scientific research for the Cougar Network,
a nonprofit research organization that is spearheading a rigorous analysis of cougar migrations.
Along with his colleagues, he has
clearly shown that cougar sightings have increased markedly in
the Midwest over the last 20 years,
and that individual cats from established populations further West are
probing and in some cases re-colonizing the Great Plains.
The trend has prompted states
that are seeing increased numbers of wandering males, but that
don’t yet have resident bands of
Bill Betty
gives a
mountain lion
presentation
at the
Adirondack
Mountain
Club’s
High Peaks
Information
Center in
Lake Placid,
NY. Many
audience
members say
they have
seen cougars
themselves.