Cougars, which can reach seven feet long including their
tail, are powerful enough to take down an elk, though they
feed mainly on deer. As their habitat becomes increasingly
fragmented by roads and development, young cougars find it
hard to disperse. One of the greatest threats to cougars is
negative public perception. In Oregon, the Sierra Club is
the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service to stop a planned experiment that involves
killing healthy cougars to observe the impact on elk populations.
But there's good news as well: Cougars may be making a comeback
in the East, where they were thought to have gone extinct,
and populations are growing in western states partly as a
result of bans on hunting with hounds.
State threatened, three subspecies are federally endangered.