CSG Species Accounts: Puma (Puma concolor)

Principal Threats
Across the Americas, ranchers are likely to continue to view pumas as a threat to their livestock and to attempt to elimate them. Pumas are vulnerable because they return to their kills, which can be poisoned, and because of they take to trees when hunted by dogs. Shaw (1977) found that calves of less than one year, weighing generally under 90 kg, were most frequently taken in Arizona. Crawshaw and Quigley (in prep.) found similar results on a Brazilian ranch, and Yañez et al. (1986) observed that pumas were significant predators of sheep on ranches in Chile. See Part II Chapter 2 for further discussion of livestock depredation by pumas and ways to control it.
With legal protection, pumas now occur very close to settled areas throughout western North America, and attacks on people, while infrequent compared to other hazards from animals or nature (such as lightning strikes), have increased (Beier 1991). However, there seems to be genuine public support for the puma’s presence in most of North America despite the dangers, a major change in public perception over the past few decades (Seidensticker and Lumpkin 1992, Jalkotzy et al. 1992).