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Highways prevent pumas from reclaiming their eastern U.S. range: Study

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Pumas are unlikely to recolonize much of their historical range in the eastern U.S., a new study finds. It’s not a lack of habitat or food keeping out the pumas, also known as cougars or mountain lions. It’s the highways. Historically, pumas (Puma concolor) ranged coast to coast across nearly all of the Americas, stretching from the northern reaches of Canada, down through the U.S. Rocky Mountains, and into South America from the Amazon Rainforest all the way south to Patagonia. But by the late 1800s, a combination of habitat loss and hunting wiped them out from the eastern half of the U.S. Researchers used a model to predict where pumas might expand their range in North America this century. They used observational data on movement, population and survival of the animals to predict the areas in which the carnivores would be able to successfully establish a breeding population. The study’s model predicted that pumas are likely to reclaim just 2.1% of their North American historical range by 2100, mostly in boreal Canada. A few western states in the U.S. could also see some new pumas, but they won’t move farther east. Hunting in western states is part of the problem, but the lion’s share of the issue is a combination of human development and highways that create a fragmented landscape that pumas simply can’t break through, the study found. An earlier study found one to two pumas are killed on highways each week in California alone. Pumas are listed…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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