Sapphire Cougar Project, Montana

For 12 years, I ran a population study tracking resident mountain lions in the Sapphire Mountains on the east side of the Bitterroot Valley. This study pioneered noninvasive protocols. We never used collars and we never treed or handled cats. We strove to be as minimally invasive as possible and to limit our disturbance of the lives of our study animals. Through genetic sampling relying on hair and scat collected opportunistically along track lines and from kill sites, we were able to identify and follow populations over time. We established residents, transients, land use patterns, kitten survival rates, dispersal rates, and relatedness. We used camera trapping to help bridge any gaps left by the genetic sampling. This was vital to our success and over time, led to our being able to tell the stories of our resident mountain lions in the award-winning documentary, ‘Tracking Notes: The Secret World Of Mountain Lions’. This work contributed to conservation and management in Montana. We documented behaviors never before recorded, and contributed to how we understand the complexity of the social structure of cougars and what those relationships and interactions look like.