Flexible habitat selection by cougars in response to anthropogenic development

Abstract

Large carnivore populations are imperiled worldwide through habitat loss, insufficient prey, and intolerance by people, promoting concerns that their populations will persist only in protected areas and remote regions. This assumption is challenged by recent colonization of areas with high human use in the former ranges of several carnivore species, including cougars (Puma concolor). We hypothesized that cougars adjust their behavior to accommodate anthropogenic development, facilitating successful use of modified habitats. We tested this hypothesis using resource selection functions for 42 individual cougars maintaining home ranges across a gradient of anthropogenic development. We evaluated variation in selection among individual cougars by time of day, home-range location (i.e., rural vs. wilderness cougars), and using functional response curves. Cougars stayed further away from both roads and buildings during the day than they did at night, and wilderness cougars showed stronger avoidance of anthropogenic features than did their rural counterparts. Selection patterns of individual cougars varied greatly, and some of this variation was explained by the functional response. For example, cougars decreased their avoidance of some anthropogenic features as those features became more prevalent on the landscape. Failure to account for potential functional responses in habitat selection could lead to overestimation of negative impacts of development for adaptable large carnivores. Given high adaptability to anthropogenic habitat modification displayed by cougars, cougar persistence in increasingly developed landscapes may depend more on human tolerance than on maintaining large tracts of pristine wilderness.