DENVER — Scientists in Utah have tracked a cougar's remarkable 1,000-mile journey from the Utah mountains all the way to eastern Colorado.
Wildlife biologist Morgan Hinton wrote on the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources' blog that they began placing GPS tracking collars on more than 60 adult cougars within the state back in 2018.
The tracking collars provide biologists with valuable data on cougars, including feeding behavior, reproduction, survival, cause-specific mortality and movement.
Scientists have documented some incredible movements of cougars in Utah, Hinton wrote, but one cougar in particular impressed biologists by traveling a little more than 1,000 miles in 165 days.
It's one of the longest journeys ever recorded for a GPS-tracked cougar, Hinton wrote.
Named F66 by researchers, the female cougar's trek began on May 30, 2022, just a few months after she was captured and collared in the Wasatch mountains.
She traveled through three states — Utah, Wyoming and Colorado — and crossed busy highways along the way including Interstate 80, I-25, I-70 and Highway 40 during her five-month voyage.
At one point, Hinton wrote, the two-year-old swam at least a quarter mile across the Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Wyoming before continuing south.
F66 averaged six miles a day but traveled more than 20 miles on some days, Hinton wrote. After making it over the Rocky Mountains, she continued on and ended up crossing 75% of the state of Colorado before her death on Nov. 13, 2022. A biologist and a wildlife veterinarian determined that she had been killed by another cougar.
Wildlife biologists call F66's journey a dispersal event rather than a migration event because it was a one-time movement away from her home range. It's a behavior exhibited by a number of cougars, according to Hinton. They're most common in young animals, but they are seen in adults sometimes as well.
There's no telling what motivated F66 to take on such a voyage, but Hinton wrote the greatest drivers of dispersal are often resource availability and avoidance of inbreeding.
Hinton wrote biologists are able to use GPS tracking data to identify important movement corridors for cougars and identify how movement is influenced by age and sex. That information is crucial to understanding population dynamics and improving management strategies for cougars in Utah and surrounding states.
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