The Division of Wildlife Resources utilizes GPS technology to gather data on wildlife and recently shared the daring tale of a 2-year-old collared female cougar. Picture this: “On July 4th, 2022 at 2am, a two-year-old collared female cougar — designated F66 by the researchers — sat on the banks of the Confluence bend of Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Wyoming. A little over 220 miles into her journey, she had a choice to make: turn around and return north or make a chilling plunge into the water. Shockingly, F66 chose the latter and swam at least a quarter mile across the reservoir to reach the other side and continue her travels south.” The DWR shares that this was just one of the incredible events of this daring cougar’s journey of over 1,000 miles during a five-month-long trek. An animation of the migration journey can be viewed with this wildlife blog post through wildlife.utah.gov.
