CSG Species Accounts: Puma (Puma concolor)

Habitat and Distribution
Pumas have a very broad latitudinal range encompassing a diverse array of habitats (Figure 10), from arid desert to tropical rainforest to cold coniferous forest, from sea level up to 5,800 m in the Andes (Redford and Eisenberg 1992). While several studies have shown that habitat with dense understory vegetation is preferred (Seidensticker et al. 1973, Logan and Irwin 1985, Laing 1988, Johnson et al. in press), pumas can live in very open habitats with only a minimum of vegetative cover (Lindzey 1987, Seidensticker 1991b). Pumas are occasionally reported from areas of intensive agricultural cultivation, although such animals are likely to be transient (Tischendorf and Henderson 1993).
The puma’s historical distribution included every major habitat type in the Americas up to the boreal forests of the far north, but pumas have been essentially eliminated from eastern North America. Severe reduction of native ungulate populations through hunting and forest clearance during the nineteenth century, coupled with direct persecution of the puma, are the probable causes (Wright 1959). Deer have since multiplied and spread, and the puma is now found in areas colonized by deer which were outside its historical range, such as the Great Basin Desert in the western U.S. (Berger and Wehausen 1991).