Should we bring mountain lions back to the Northeast?
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Hi, I'm Jane Lindholm, and you're listening to Science Friday. I'm filling in today for Flora and Ira. Big cats used to roam across the entire United States. You might know them as mountain lions, pumas, cougars, or catamounts. They have many different names, but they're actually all the same species. Their current U.S. population is mostly confined to western states and a small population in Florida, though in recent years they've been spotted east of the Mississippi River. Most mountain lions were gone from the northeast by the 1800s, with the last verified accounts in the 1930s. My next guest is a mountain lion conservationist hoping to reintroduce these wildcats back to their previous habitats in New England.
What historical context surrounds mountain lions in the Northeast?
But should we? Dr. Mark Elbrock is the director of the PUMA program at Panthera, a big cat conservation and advocacy organization. Mark, thank you so much for joining me.
Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me on the show.
Let's just jump right in. Why would people want to bring mountain lions back to the Northeast?
Ooh. That's a great question. I think one is that sort of reintroducing species that were previously part of ecosystems in the East is quite honestly a core American value. You know, it's been part of American culture, at least our conservation culture, for more than 100 years. We have reintroduced hundreds of species. People don't even realize it. Like the black bears, white-tailed deer, river otters, beavers. All of these things were rare at one point in New England or absent in parts of New England and were successfully brought back through reintroduction efforts and protections. And so I think it's fair to say that, you know, it is a core value of American people to say we did something wrong and we want to right that wrong and bring back and rebuild the ecosystems which we changed.
Beyond wanting to maybe repair something that humans could say we were the ones who damaged, is our ecosystem missing anything without mountain lions?
Yeah. So, I mean, large carnivores contribute all sorts of things to ecosystems. And one is that they bolster the ecological health and resilience of an ecosystem, meaning that they are better armed with the sort of internal mechanisms needed to protect themselves after a fire, a wildlife disease outbreak, a timber harvest. And the ecosystems can recover from those events more quickly when they have systems that are more complex. And large carnivores add to that complexity. And then the other is that they make animals afraid. And As strange as that sounds, it's a really important thing. And so, for instance, their primary prey, which in New England would be deer, would be pooping in different places.
They'd be hiding in different places. And it really spreads nutrients across the landscape in different ways than in their absence. And those fear effects are, you know, really important for us as well. You know, we just did a really cool study out where I live in Washington State, very much like New England and western Washington, at least in terms of a rural landscape. But we looked at the impact that the local mountain lions were having on deer collisions with people and their cars. And we found that the areas where the mountain lions were close to the highways were and they were scaring deer away from them, they were reducing local deer collisions with cars by 76%. I mean, that's a huge number, and it translates into millions of dollars of savings for local communities.
And that's the kind of thing that that fear can create on the landscape.
I live in Vermont, and there are many Vermonters who say mountain lions, or as we call them, catamounts, never actually left. And people have been spotting them for the last 150 years. Not possible.
I wish it were true. You know, I lived in New England much of my life as well. And in fact, while I was in New England, I think I investigated 53 sightings, you know, going around to verify whether these were truly mountain lions or not. And one of them ended up being a mountain lion.
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