The cougar looked straight at Maniago, showing no alarm. Cougar encounters like Maniago's are on the rise in parts of the West, as urban sprawl encroaches on cougar habitats and laws implemented to protect the animals have borne fruit. The increased sightings have had deadly consequences. Ecology professor Paul Beier has documented 17 deaths and 70 nonfatal attacks from 1890 to the present. Seven of those deaths and 29 other attacks have occurred since 1990.
State laws vary wildly when it comes to cougars.
California has an all-out ban on hunting the cats and considers the mountain lion a protected animal. Texas, on the other extreme, allows cougars to be killed year-round with no limits. Before European settlers arrived in America, cougar country stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific. They were eradicated in the eastern states by ranchers and hunters, while bounty hunters drastically reduced their numbers in the West. But cougar populations began to recover when western states repealed bounties and limited cougar hunting in the 1960s.