Oregon Cougar Action Team

TRUTH IN PERSPECTIVE:

• Over 11,000 Americans die each year from gun shot wounds.
• 500,000 Americans each year are disfigured and/or crippled by pet domestic dog bites.
• Pet domestic dogs yearly do more livestock damage than combined cougar and bobcat livestock damage!
• In the last 100 years, 71 Americans have been attacked by cougar and all but three survived.  One person died from rabies as a result of the attack.

• Cougar are extinct in 36 States of the Union primarily from sports hunting and not habitat loss.
• Without using tracking collars, it is impossible to ever get an accurate count of a cougar population.
• Using hunters as a count source is a flawed science. There are more hunters than cougar, and multiple counts on one cougar cannot be documented. 
• Average range of a cougar is 150 miles including crossing State borders.
• Poaching and illegal trade of cougar skin, body parts, and cubs is growing.
• Thousands of children go missing each year in America by human predators and both worldwide animal and human black markets are growing in record numbers.
• The odds of a cougar liking human flesh is rare.  To wildlife, we smell bad and taste bad because of a diet filled with coke drinks. processed foods, drugs, cigarettes and other human habits, plus, there is not a big history of cougar rampages against humans!
• The odds of getting attacked by a cougar because you are harassing him is great.  Be smart, leave the cats alone!
• Hunting cougar increase human encounters because the orphaned young have not been taught to care for themselves and often end up confused, starving, weak and terrified in your back yard.  Hunting cougar does not promote human safety but instead makes it less safe for all concerned.