Bring on the cougars! I’m referring of course to the large predator cats. Still confused? They also go by puma and mountain lion. These are big ferocious predators who prey on deer.
As cougar populations increase, there tends to be a related decrease in deer-vehicle collisions. A look at how cougars, deer and humans interact along roads, related to time of day/night, explains the primary reason.
Deer, being a reclusive and fearful prey species, tend to forage when they have the least risk of being seen by humans and big game predators like cougars.
When wolves repopulate our Los Padres National Park, wolves will add to the list of concerns for deer.
Cougars tend to hunt at night, with the most active periods being dawn and dusk, making them crepuscular predators. This is partly because cougars are also reclusive and shy away from human interaction.
It is also because their favorite prey (deer) are most active at night.
Humans will travel at any hour of day or night. Counting cars on rural and mountain roads shows far fewer nighttime drivers than daytime drivers.
Deer-vehicle collisions occur more often at night, even with fewer cars on the road. This is because deer move around more at night, and because drivers have reduced visibility during hours of darkness which makes it more difficult to stop in time to avoid collision.
The interspecies connection now begins to come into focus. Cougars hunt deer at night, moving the deer around to elude predation and putting them across country roads in the dark when drivers often can’t spot them in time to avoid collision.
This pattern and risk of collision improve when cougar populations are on the increase because it shifts the timelines of predator/prey movement. The result is fewer collisions.
As the perceived (by deer) risk of predation during the night increases, deer tend to shift their schedules to remain more secluded and difficult to find at night. They become daytime foragers.
This shift to daytime foraging for deer puts them crossing roads more often during the daylight hours.
Yes, there are more cars on the road during the daylight however our range of visibility is so much bigger during the day than at nighttime when we are limited to the lighted area from our headlights.
I read of a study done on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State which found a 67% reduction in the probability of a deer-vehicle collision when cougar populations were high.
I’m thinking we may find similar results here in the Los Padres National Forest. So again, bring on the cougars.
