Puma Field Guide

1. What they did

This is a field guide, not a research paper. It updates a guide that Harley Shaw first wrote in 1979 for Arizona Game and Fish Department staff, who used it to assess puma populations and to check reports of pumas killing livestock. Wildlife officers and interested laypeople came to use it too, and new demand arose from rumours of pumas in the eastern United States and from more encounters between pumas and people.

The authors bring together methods for detecting, studying and managing pumas, mainly in the southwestern United States. The guide covers:

• Biology: the new taxonomy, the history of puma management and research in Arizona, and the life history of the different sex and age classes.
• Reading sign: how to identify puma tracks, scrapes, scats, kills and other sign, and how to tell them from those of dogs, wolves, coyotes, bears and bobcats.
• Management: dealing with predation on wildlife and livestock, and responding to sightings, threats and attacks on people.
• Capture and handling: hounds, snares, steel traps, cage traps and drugs.
• Assessing populations: track and sign counts, identifying individuals from tracks, cameras, DNA, and methods to tell sex and age.
• Habitat and viability: habitat area, fragmentation, corridors and a population model.

The appendix holds forms, including a checklist for suspected predator kills and incident and attack report forms based on New Mexico’s protocol.

2. What they found

Biology and behaviour

• Genetic studies cut the number of puma subspecies from 32 to 6; all pumas in the United States and Canada now fall in one, the North American subspecies.
• Adult males use home areas of 75 to 200 square miles where prey is plentiful, and females 25 to 50 square miles. Where prey is scarce, home areas can reach 290 square miles or more. Densities can reach one puma per 10 to 15 square miles. Pumas cannot live where there is no permanent water.
• Young males often disperse far; some have settled up to 300 miles from where they were born.
• Deer are the staple prey. In an Arizona study, mule deer made up 60% of kills and cattle 37%, mostly calves.
• A puma usually covers their kill after feeding, comes back several times, and uncovers, moves and re-covers it each time.

Reading tracks

• Heel pad width is the most useful measurement. Mature pumas have heel pads 1.7 to 2.7 inches (43 to 70 mm) wide, but large dogs overlap this range.
• The angle between the lines through the two outer toes helps tell puma from dog: 29 degrees or less is probably puma, 30 degrees or more most likely dog. About 5% of dog tracks have angles as low as 25 degrees, and deep sand or mud distorts the angle, so other features should always be checked.
• Other features: puma heels have three even lobes at the back; puma toes are uneven across the front and the outer toes are rounded on the inside; dog tracks are more symmetrical and usually show nails. Pumas usually walk, place their feet firmly and leave little disturbance, while dogs wander, trot and kick up dirt.
• Tracks are best documented with a close-up photograph with a scale and a number, or traced onto safety glass and then onto paper.
• Track size depends on region (pumas on the North Kaibab are larger) and on sex and age. Feet keep growing until 3 to 4 years old. Table 2 gives a rough guide to reading one, two or three or more sets of tracks travelling together, for example a mature female with young.
• Hind heel pads wider than 52 mm usually mean an adult or large subadult male (from Ken Logan’s text on sexing treed pumas).

Other sign

• Scrapes are mostly made by mature males, usually with the hind feet, on rims, saddles and main travel routes, often with urine. A single puma foot leaves a mark at least 3 inches wide; a bobcat’s seldom exceeds 2 inches.
• Scats can be identified with certainty only with other evidence (kills, scrapes, tracks, dung heaps); mature puma scats are 1 to 1.5 inches across. DNA is needed where certainty matters.
• Kills: best checked within two or three days. Pumas usually kill with a bite to the back of the neck or the throat. Upper canine holes are about 1.8 to 2.0 inches apart; dog and coyote bites are much narrower. Pumas usually open the carcass behind the ribs after plucking the hair, eat the liver, lungs and heart first, bury the paunch, drag the carcass under cover and bury it, leaving drag marks between burial sites. Dog kills usually show damage to the hindquarters and signs of chewing and harassment.
• Lots of puma sign in a small area, or tracks going both ways along a “puma path”, usually means a kill is near; trailing along the path both ways often finds it.
• Mounds of pine needles or other debris 4 or 5 feet across look like buried kills but hold no animal remains; their purpose is unknown.
• On horses, wire and fence cuts are often mistaken for puma claw marks.

Monitoring

• Only capture and recapture of radio-collared pumas gives accurate population estimates, and it is costly and invasive.
• Track counts should use short routes (about 1 mile or 2 kilometres) on dirt roads, trails or drainage bottoms, walked in early morning light. They are cheap and non-invasive and suit trained volunteers, but depend on observer skill, need good tracking surfaces, cannot be randomised, and track numbers may not follow population size. About 5 to 10 years of data are needed before trends mean much.
• Individuals can be told apart from photographs of at least four clear hind tracks per track set, using nine measurements and Fisher’s discriminant analysis. Toe areas and the spread between the outer toes worked best. In a California example, eight of nine track sets from three pumas were grouped correctly.
• Cameras, hair snares and DNA from scats show promise, but no reliable lure has been found to draw pumas to sampling sites.

Habitat

• Loss and fragmentation of habitat by urban development is the greatest threat. Between 50 and 500 pumas have been suggested as a minimum for a lasting population, which would need roughly 900 to 9000 square miles of habitat. Most isolated mountain ranges can support 25 pumas or fewer.

3. What they concluded

• Radio-tracking studies are expensive and invasive and may have reached diminishing returns. Routine monitoring must rely on less invasive methods, so biologists must learn to identify and systematically record puma sign and interpret it using what radio-tracking has taught about puma biology and social behaviour.
• Identifying sign is like learning the piano: it takes experience and practice. Written guides are hard to apply and most people need experienced trackers to confirm their findings.
• Better methods to monitor puma populations are badly needed; track and sign surveys, set cameras and DNA from scats and hair all need further testing.
• Long-term studies over several climatic cycles are needed to understand how puma predation and climate together affect deer and bighorn numbers.
• Moving problem pumas does not solve predation.
• Habitat area and connectivity are the two main factors deciding whether puma populations survive, so future management will centre on protecting habitat and corridors.

4. How tracking was or was not used

Tracking is at the heart of the guide. It gives detailed methods for tracks and signs identification (tracks, scrapes, scats, kills, drag marks, burial sites, claw marks, tooth marks, blood and mounds), for telling puma from similar species, for reading the sex, age and group make-up of pumas from track sets, for track counts along survey routes, and for identifying individuals from track measurements. Trailing appears in following “puma paths” to find kills and in hound hunting, where hunters track pumas and can notice kitten tracks. Kill-site investigation is presented as a tracks-and-signs exercise, supported by a checklist in the appendix.

5. Tracker or observer certification

Not reported. The guide is not a study with observers. It stresses that sign surveys depend on observer skill, that grown males’ tracks can be classified with fair certainty by experienced observers, and suggests training from experienced puma hunters, animal control staff, biologists with puma experience and tracking schools or organisations. It names no certification or skill test.

6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

• Tracing tracks onto safety glass (rather than Plexiglas, which attracts dust in dry climates) and then onto paper.
• Measuring the toe angle with a protractor on the tracing or a photograph.
• Track photographs with a scale and an ID number, taken from a tripod with the camera parallel to the ground, with a flash or a red umbrella to control light; toe areas counted with a dot transparency.
• Fisher’s discriminant analysis to group track sets by individual.
• Hair snares made from carpet pads, scent stations, call boxes playing prey or puma calls, and a field protocol for collecting and storing hair and scat samples for DNA.
• Detailed snare design and drug doses for capture and handling.
• Program puma, a free population viability model.

7. Implications for conservation (from the paper)

• Management across the puma’s range should keep habitat connected for long-distance dispersal and keep the six subspecies intact; translocations should use source and release areas as close together as possible.
• Puma hunting does not seem to threaten the species, but habitat loss and fragmentation may, leading to isolated, inbred populations.
• Corridors should link core habitat, be at least about a quarter mile wide, follow natural travel routes such as larger drainages, have cover, no night lighting and low housing density. Road crossings should have bridges or underpasses with fencing; overpasses are proving more effective.
• Survey records should be archived, because long-term records of puma presence may be valuable 50 or 100 years from now.