A scent post is a scrape that has been built up with leaves or other debris, and then personalized with the cougar's urine and scat. Male cougars will use trees as scratching posts, not only leaving scent from their paw pads, but leaving visual evidence of their presence, as well. The amount of favorable cougar habitat is shrinking rapidly. Human encroachment into cougar territory continues as the human population expands and people try to maintain low-density housing. In recent years numbers of deer and elk have been rising, and with them the cougar population has increased.
Cougars have some ability to self-regulate their population.
When there are too many adults for the prey base to support, cougars have smaller litters or skip a breeding cycle entirely, however, they are losing habitat at too fast a rate for this natural self-regulation to be effective. The result is an elevated number of transient cougars. The debate rages on. One thing everyone seems to agree on is that more information is needed. Contact your forest service or state or national park staff for current information if you are concerned with the cougar situation in areas where you are planning to travel.