By Laura Bowers ForemanScience Journalist

In eastern Washington, scientist-student collaborations are connecting classroom science with authentic applications. Now in its sixth year,

Project CAT (Cougars and Teaching) is taking the scientific partnership a step further by incorporating civics into the environmental education curriculum, and the result is providing students with an enduring understanding.

Cougars (Puma concolor) predate the arrival of humans and have survived, in part, because they have proven to be both adaptable and opportunistic. Partnered with the Pacific Education Institute, Cle Elum-Roslyn School District Superintendent

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Above: Students hold a 6-week-old kitten in Washington state. Photograph by Laura Foreman.

Project Cougars & Teaching

Through the Eyesof a Cougar

Mark Flatau has proven that the CER District can also be adaptable, as teachers and scientists work with students to incorporate the big cats into their K-12 environmental education curriculum. Under the leadership of Washington Fish and Wildlife Biologist Dr. Gary Koehler, students utilize the indigenous population of cougars to conduct rigorous scientific field research. Combining field and laboratory work, students learn to see their local environment “through the eyes of a cougar.”

As students become informed citizen-scientists, they understand how to better manage human-cougar interactions and can take on leadership responsibilities by

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sharing their experiences as educators in their community. Eighth grade science teacher Trish Griswold has worked with CAT students to create CougarWise, a program that teaches local citizens how to live safely among these top predators. She explains, “The kids who show an interest in CAT are the ones who get to go out on the captures and presentations. The project really motivates them because they have to get their other assignments done in order to qualify.”

During their elementary years, students build their foundation as they investigate their local environment. Whether focusing on baby animals, butterflies, plants, or stream habitat, students constantly expand the

boundaries of their understanding of the natural world around them. Using science and math, students increase their abilities to observe, identify, measure, and record the details of their local ecology. Over the years, they develop the thinking skills necessary to understand why the landscape provides cougar habitat. By eighth grade, students can begin to go out on the captures of wild cougars.

High school senior Rusty Skurski, a veteran of many live cougar captures, explained, “Ever since I was in fourth grade, I’ve been learning about the food chain in the classroom. The diagrams are beneficial, but when I got to go out to a kill site and found an elk carcass, it all started to make sense. Out in the field, it’s no longer

Below, from left: Alex Hedrick, Marissa Luchau, JJ Lambert, Christina Heath, and Dr. Gary Koehler. Photograph by Ben Maletzke.

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Spencer Ozbolt holds a 4-week-old kitten.Photograph by Laura Foreman.

just a picture with a bunch of arrows. You have to search around and try to figure out what happened – what were the movements of the cougar, and what was its reasoning?”

Out in the field, students assist Koehler and doctoral candidate Ben Maletzke as cougars are fitted with global positioning system (GPS) collars and marked with ear tags. Measurements include length, chest girth, and weight. Using calipers, age is determined by measuring incisors. Blood samples are drawn for disease analysis. Tissue samples are used for DNA profiling.

After his first capture, Skurski remarked, “When I first touched a cougar (sedated), I couldn’t believe

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I was petting one of the greatest predators. I mean, they are at the top of the food chain. While I was measuring his teeth, he was actually licking me. I was shocked when I measured his full body length and realized his tail was half his length. The tail is so limber and yet so muscular… it was like griping a baseball bat.”

One year, Koehler and students located and recovered the body of a collared female using the GPS mortality signal. Under Koehler’s guidance, students at the high school performed a necropsy. Skurski observed, “In the necropsy, I saw that every inch of a cougar’s body is a ‘six-pack’ of sheer muscle. My

respect for these animals grew, and I could see why a cougar is a perfect hunting machine. The jaw muscles are immense. The muscles of their back legs are quite large, and the claws on their back legs are straighter – the combination gives them greater propulsion when they run. Their front claws, on the other hand, are much more curved – for gripping their prey.”

The GPS collars provide 600 location readings for each animal per year, and on computer-generated maps of the study area, students plot coordinates of cougar locations. Computer programs calculate the size of a cougar’s actual territory. With long-term data that shows both

Figure 1: Map of adult female cougar’s movements in developing area. Image by Ben Maletzke.

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Alex Hedrick inspects cougar tracks leading into the distance. Photograph by Ben Maletzke.

Below: Hilary Cooley (left) and Kevin White (far right) accompany Ben Maletzke as he holds a 6-week-old kitten. Photograph by Laura Foreman.

size and location of a population of individual cougars, scientists and students can analyze the habitat range of the species.

From his experience with Project CAT, 17-year-old Sturski concluded, “The cats intend for you not to see them. Even when they are just waking up after being drugged for the collaring and tests, they are driven by instinct to hide. They are still groggy and moving slowly, but sometimes I loose sight of them and can only find them by searching for the trail they leave in the snow. The cats would prefer to be away from humans. They don’t want to risk injury during an encounter, but there may be encounters – especially as more people are in the woods or during the winter. Living in an area with cougars, I have learned that they were here before people, and we have to respect that. With proper education,

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humans and cougars can co-exist.” College student Kevin White

has participated in Project CAT since its inception in 2001. Now a senior majoring in wildlife ecology at Washington State University, he explained, “I grew up always camping, fishing, and hunting with my dad and grandpa… I wanted a job that I could work outside...” At the university, White has been able to continue his work with Project CAT as he assists doctoral candidate Hilary Cooley. She is investigating kitten survival and correlating predation rates to the survival rates for kittens. White explained, “Cougars are elusive predators that are seldom noticed by the public – until people begin to develop roads and buildings in their habitats… And yet these cougars can continue to kill deer, conceal it in dense brush, and no one knows they’re even there.” White and

other students have presented their findings at the 7th Annual Mountain Lion Conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and to the Kittitas County Big Game Management Roundtable.

Gary Koehler explains the success of Project CAT: “Students are our colleagues in research, but more importantly, they are the faces and voices of Project CAT. They are the ones who present our findings to the community, to the local civic, and hunting groups. They’ve even presented at national conferences. Their enthusiasm and expertise is really impressive. These students will be tomorrow’s leaders. Through Project CAT, they have experience in both science and civics and have an enduring understanding of what is necessary to maintain both public safety and a healthy population of cougars.”

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Doctoral candidate Brian Kertson (left) and student Kylie Linde measure a sedated cougar’s teeth. Photograph by Ben Maletzke.