The Cougar Next Door

How did the cougar comeback happen? By the early 1900s, the animals that had survived hunters, trappers, and U.S. government policy to eradicate predators had been pushed largely to the West's mountainous wildlands. But due to federal regulations that were put in place in the 1970s to manage hunting and prohibit poisoning, cougars now have a confirmed presence in many populated regions, including L.A., the second-largest urban area in the U.S. (a series of fatal and nonfatal attacks in California have only made things more complicated for human-cougar relations).

According to Chadwick, it's a simple equation: "More cougars plus more people in the countryside add up to more potential for conflict." As our urban areas continue to expand outward, growing numbers of cougars approach populated areas, the two are meeting with more frequency. It's a signal moment, because right now cougar policy is quite literally all over the map: you can shoot them in Texas (they're classified as "varmints") though not in California. But wildlife biologists are starting to agree on policy recently implemented by Washington State, which matches hunting caps to the cougar's natural rate of increase. Hunting cougars to excess, it turns out, may encourage survivors to roam outside their habitat ... and closer to ours.