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magazine / nd07
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November/December 2007 issue |
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FEATURE
Wildlife stories of the year
Wildlife research tends to move at a glacial
pace, taking years of plodding, patient fieldwork,
data analysis and literature review
before a breakthrough reveals itself. In the
past year, though, a significant number of
discoveries, trends and warnings came into
the spotlight: confirmation of a cougar in
southern Ontario; an increase in the number
of swift foxes on the prairies, without human
help; and the decimation of shark populations worldwide, to name a few. On the following
pages, we present those and more of the year’s noteworthy wildlife stories.
Cougars on the move
After decades of fleeting glimpses and speculation,
DNA analysis proves that the elusive puma is
reinhabiting its range in Ontario
By Eric Harris
The scat proves the cat’s back. Confirmation came in
May, but the story started in March 2004, when Anne Yagi,
a biologist with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources,
was inspecting a carnivore kill site in the Wainfleet Bog, near
Port Colborne, Ont. She was convinced it wasn’t the work
of a coyote, so she collected fur and scat samples and handed
one promising piece of feces over to Stuart Kenn, president
of the Ontario Puma Foundation. It turned out to be the
most significant proof, in a field of frustratingly anecdotal
evidence, that the cougar (Puma concolor) is reoccupying
parts of its former eastern habitat.
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The solitary cat ranges over the largest area of any wild terrestrial
mammal in the hemisphere, from northern British
Columbia to the southern Andes of Chile and Argentina.
Dispersing over a territory of up to 1,000 square kilometres,
it prowls, feeds and snoozes in all types of forests and in lowlands
and mountainous deserts, denning in escarpments,
rimrocks and dense brush. The puma, its taxonomically
correct common name, likes a lot of space and seclusion,
making its presence notoriously difficult to prove.
If anyone can prove the cats are on an upswing, though,
it is the 40 puma experts and interested parties who gathered
in May for the third Midwestern-Eastern Puma
Conference at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont. The
meeting was hosted by the Ontario Puma Foundation,
which works to preserve key corridors and habitats to help
rehabilitate the eastern cougar (Puma concolor couguar), a distinct
population that was driven from eastern North America
in the two centuries after European colonization by settlers
clearing land and hunting the big cats for killing livestock.
For the rest of this story, visit your local newsstand or go to our store to buy this issue.
CG
In-depth: Caribou in Canada
Learn how this national symbol is struggling to survive in a changing world, explore our
website for profiles of the different subspecies of caribou, the photo gallery, sound clips
and video clips from the award-winning documentary Being Caribou. |
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