Whether cougars are fascinating or frightful depends on perception, Utah researchers say.

The powerful hunters do occasionally cross tracks with humans, sometimes posing real danger. Still, those studying large predators like mountain lions hope to arm the public with education, showing them there’s not much to fear. That understanding may be the key for a peaceful coexistence.

“When it comes to attacks or encounters … those are extremely rare, but for the average citizen who is not learning about wildlife in any other formal venue except what they hear on the news, that’s what they associate these animals with,” said David Stoner, a postdoctoral fellow and mountain lion researcher at Utah State University.

The Swaner Preserve and EcoCenter in Park City and the Quinney College of Natural Resources of Utah State University will be hosting a special traveling exhibit on cougars in an effort to better educate that average citizen. Called “Lions! The Story of Pumas and People,” the exhibit opens on Nov. 15 and runs until the end of March 2015. It will explore the relationship between humans and cougars through the millennia and teach visitors about mountain lion behavior.

Big predators are often a polarizing topic in the West. Ranchers and hunters often don’t appreciate their impacts to livestock and game. Urban populations, however, have seen value in the species and pushed conservation efforts.

“It’s the idea that we, to put it in a more common metaphor, want to have our cake and eat it, too,” said John Shivik, a wildlife biologist and author of “The Predator Paradox: Ending the War with Wolves, Bears, Cougars and Coyotes.”

“We want to have these beautiful creatures around, but it’s hard for us to swallow the responsibility and cost of having them around,” he said.

Scientists have studied mountain lion behavior for decades. They began tracking the animals with radio telemetry collars back in the 1960s to understand their movement and habits. But until recently, cougar research focused on animals living in wild lands mostly devoid of human influence.

Now, the data on cougars living along developed fringes is trickling in, showing the animals live much closer to the human environment than many urbanites realize, especially as human development expands to their turf.

“They are not necessarily avoiding human activity,” Stoner said. “They continue to use these areas because that’s where they live and that’s where they know how to find food.”

The term “mountain lion” can be misleading, Stoner said, because the animals avoid high alpine area as well as low-lying deserts in Utah.

“For the most part, they’re not living up in the mountains, they’re down here on the edges,” he said. “I think they should be called foothill lions, because that’s really where they are.”

The foothills are where many human neighborhoods have expanded along the Wasatch Range, fragmenting the cougar’s natural habitat. Complicating things further, gardens and irrigation often attract the cougar’s prey, like deer and elk, and mountain lion territory follows prey.

“These are animals that need a lot of space,” Stoner said. “They roam widely, and when they disperse, they go incredible distances.”

The pervasiveness and tenacity of the mountain lions throughout the West often raises the question, is it safe to walk in the mountains and woods?

“My answer is yes,” Shivik said. “At the same time, if you’re walking in mountains in the evening, you should have the same amount of awareness as if you’re getting money out of an ATM. Bring a walking stick, and if you encounter one, be aggressive, make sure you fight it off.”

According to Stoner, from 1890 to 2010, there have been 29 fatal attacks and 154 non-fatal attacks from mountain lions in North America, total. By contrast, vehicle crashes with deer kill 135 people annually in the U.S. Dogs attack around 200,000 people per year and kill 18, according to Stoner’s statistics. Lightning kills an average of 86 people per year.

“So how do our mountain lions stack up?” Stoner said. “One person dies every six and a half years in North America.”

Over half of those attacks happen in British Columbia in Canada, Stoner said. No human deaths have come from cougar attacks in Utah. While mountain lions might be roaming just beyond our backyards, human encounters are exceedingly rare. 

“Anecdotally, I’ve been studying these animals intermittently for about 18 years, and without hounds or radio telemetry, I’ve never seen one in the wild,” Stoner said. “I go hiking and backpacking through cougar territory quite frequently, and I’ve never seen one by chance.”

The animals are so hard to find that Stoner has instead turned to researching cougar food sources to get a better idea of where they are and how cougars move. His latest work is a NASA-funded project using satellite imagery to measure plant and climate cycles, which in turn predict the abundance of deer, elk and bighorn sheep. Mapping the range of these ungulates in turn helps Stoner predict where the mountain lions will be across the entire Colorado plateau.

“Mountain lions are so elusive and difficult to study, but everything about them, everything we find, points to prey,” he said.

A better sense of cougar behavior could ultimately help the conflict humans feel with big predators, from their perceived danger to their impact on livestock.

“With more education, we can make wiser choices,” Shivik said. “The idea is to get as many facts out there to as many people as possible.”

With a growing population and more development to come, the idea is to also help protect people while preserving what artifacts of the wild remain in the West.

“If we get to the point that the only cougars we see are in zoos, that’d be a sad state of affairs,” Shivik said. “More information can help us strive toward an appropriate balance. The real enemy here is fear.”

IF YOU GO:

What: Mountain Lions! The Story of Pumas and People, a traveling educational exhibit hosted by the Swaner Preserve and EcoCenter and the USU Quinney College of Natural Resources in partnership with the Center for Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College.

Where: The Swaner Preserve and EcoCenter, 1258 Center Drive, Park City

When: Nov. 15 through March 2015

For exhibit hours and calendar of events, visit www.swanerecocenter.org or call (435) 649-1767.