1st Prize Nature Stories 02 March 2013, Los Angeles, USA A cougar walking a trail in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park is captured by a camera trap. To reach the park, which has been the cougar’s home for the last two years it had to cross two of the busiest highways in the US. Cougars are among the most adaptable and widespread terrestrial mammals in the Western Hemisphere, with a range that extends from the tip of Chile to the Ca-nadian Yukon. They are increasingly being seen in and around towns and cities, including Los Angeles and in the Hollywood Hills. Fear of these secretive cats, combined with a lack of adequate public knowledge, tends to justify the thousands of cougars killed every year. Scientists in Wyoming’s Teton National Forest are out-fitting them with GPS collars and camera trapping to learn more about basic be-haviors and to lift the veil of mystery surrounding them.
Autor: Steve Winter, USA, for National Geographic
