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In the middle of a forest reserved for timber harvesting on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, Mark Elbroch and two other members of the Olympic Cougar Project prepared to investigate a likely cougar den. They were tipped off to its location by a young female they’d fitted with a GPS collar and nicknamed Scalp last year.
Scalp’s collar connects with satellites to calculate her movements, seen as red track lines on the team’s GPS devices. These cougar experts had a pretty good idea what the seemingly erratic tracks meant. Scalp was going out to hunt deer, then circling back to nurse kittens.
It’s legal in Washington to hunt cougars. But the leading cause of death for the project’s study animals is “lethal removal,” the state’s go-to response when a landowner thinks a cougar attacked their livestock or pets. Cougars prefer deer and elk but will settle for smaller animals if they happen upon them, especially when they’re young and still learning the art of hunting larger prey. More often than not, it will cost them their life.
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📸: Michael Kodas
