Science & Nature
A recent study reveals that pumas may use a hunting strategy called ‘garden to hunt,’ in which their kills fertilize the soil, improving plant quality and attracting ungulates for future hunting. Decomposing carcasses increase soil nutrients, influencing ungulate feeding preferences and creating nutrient-rich hotspots for pumas to hunt. Pumas contribute significantly to their ecosystems by providing carrion for other species and improving soil and plant life. The study analyzed soil and plant samples from puma kill sites in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, finding that pumas were more likely to hunt in areas with specific characteristics that favored their stalk-and-ambush strategy.
Twelve pumas in Tetons produced annual prey mass comparable to size of blue whale, the world’s largest animal, feeding hundreds of Scientists collect soil samples at puma kill sites in the Tetons. Credit: Michelle Peziol
Panthera Puma Director, Dr. Mark Elbroch, stated, “Each study and glimpse into the secret lives of pumas reveals that their behaviors and contributions to nature are far more complex than imagined. Pumas contribute over a million kg of meat to ecosystems every day, improving the quality of soil and plant life, feeding hundreds of species, and supporting the health of their ecosystems and our planet’s overall web of life.”
Elbroch continued, “To those who care for the well-being of wildlife and the wild habitats sustaining all living beings, these findings yet again demonstrate the value and need to conserve the Americas’ pumas.”
Pinpointing the locations of Credit: Panthera
Scientists found the species was more likely to make kills in habitat home to high tree canopies, low elevations, steeper slopes and areas close to forest edges, roads and streams. In order, puma preference for hunting habitat included deciduous forest, mixed forest, grassland, shrub-steppe and riparian terrain.
Bottom to top, nutrient distribution via puma kills impacts how overall ecosystems operate, including influencing soil and plant chemistry and diversity; the distribution and variety of astounding 485 living species and play a critical role in holding ecosystems together throughout the Western Hemisphere. Previously, Panthera and partners found pumas serve as ecosystem engineers and provide habitat and food for 215 species of beetles.
Unlike other carnivores such as gray wolves that dismember their kills, pumas maintain intact carrion and experience high levels of kleptoparasitism or stealing of their kills. This results in pumas contributing a disproportionate amount of food to other wildlife, with pumas consuming approximately a third of the overall weight of their prey, on average, and the rest supports diverse scavengers, flora and fauna.
Though pumas range across 28 countries in the Americas, they are poorly understood and thought to be declining overall. The species is elusive and often mischaracterized as a vicious, solitary predator, leading to persecution and fueling human-puma conflict. In the United States, pumas are threatened by habitat loss, road mortality and disease; some populations are further impacted by legal hunting. In Latin America, the species faces the same threats, along with illegal hunting, which includes retaliatory killing by ranchers over livestock and loss of prey.
Reference: “Large carnivore foraging contributes to heterogeneity in nutrient cycling” by Michelle Peziol, L. Mark Elbroch, Lisa A. Shipley, R. Dave Evans and Daniel H. Thornton, 27 March 2023, Landscape Ecology.
DOI: 10.1007/s10980-023-01630-0
Panthera’s Puma Program protects pumas — also known as cougars or mountain lions — in western Washington state, California’s East Bay and the region surrounding Torres del Paine National Park in Chile. Program activities include conflict mitigation, education, studying puma prey selection, addressing livestock predation and studying competition with other carnivores and the impact of reintroduced wolves in different parts of the puma’s range.