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Path of the Puma: The Remarkable Resilience of the Mountain Lion Hardcover – October 9, 2018
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“These cats are like emissaries from the raw landscapes out West, probing the rest of the nation, showing us where patches of wildness remain, and bring a fuller dimension of wildness to them. It’s as if they’re testing to find out just what folks have in mind when they say they want to preserve natural settings. How natural? How toothy?” -- From the Foreword
During a time when most wild animals are experiencing decline in the face of development and climate change, the intrepid mountain lion -- also known as a puma, a cougar, and by many other names – has experienced reinvigoration as well as expansion of territory. What makes this cat, the fourth carnivore in the food chain -- just ahead of humans – so resilient and resourceful? And what can conservationists and wild life managers learn from them about the web of biodiversity that is in desperate need of protection? Their story is fascinating for the lessons it can afford the protection of all species in times of dire challenge and decline.
With hands-on experience in both the Rocky Mountains and the wilds of Patagonia in South America, wildlife manager Jim Williams tracks the path of the puma, and in doing so, challenges readers to consider humans’ role in this journey as well as what commitment to nature and conservation means in this day and age.
- Print length288 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPatagonia
- Publication dateOctober 9, 2018
- Dimensions6.5 x 1 x 9.5 inches
- ISBN-101938340728
- ISBN-13978-1938340727
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Jim Williams's fascinating and inspiring Path of the Puma tracks mountain lions and their place in the ecosystem, showing what can be done to preserve their habitat while enjoying our own. -- Foreword Reviews
Starred Review
"The author's passion and his firsthand knowledge of his subject make the narrative highly readable. . . . A handsome book that is well-balanced, instructive, and authoritative." -- Kirkus Reviews
There’s a success story to be told, but it’s one with a mixed outcome, he notes. “America’s vast public lands, and Patagonia’s newly conserved parks, are a bulwark against the crush of humanity,” writes Williams. “But the trajectory―despite the recent success and expansion of Puma concolor ―is toward more people and less wild nature. Predators will continue to prey on livestock. Ungulates will continue to compete for grass. Mountain lions will continue to prey on pets. Subdivisions will continue to consume habitat. Hunters will continue to compete with carnivores. Game managers will continue to be pressured by hunters.” -- National Parks Traveler
"Suggested Episode: Path of the Puma is a great place to start and will give you a sense of the great lion of North and South America and the people who care deeply about its survival." -- UpRoxx.com (about author interview on Meateater's podcast)
"...the main purpose of Path of the Puma, according to Williams, is to 'inspire people about wild things and wild places.' To that end, the book is an absolute page-turning success." "Peppered with gorgeous wildlife photography, the book is equal parts high-stakes adventure story, personal memoir, and, of course, mountain lions. . . . Like the big cats at the heart of it, Path of the Puma is a truly exceptional and important creation." -- Santa Barbara Independent
Review
About the Author
Joe Glickman was the author of Fearless: One Woman, One Kayak, One Continent (Falcon Guide, 2012), The Kayak Companion (Storey, 2003), and To the Top (Northword, 2003). Glickman's work has appeared in The New York Times, The Daily News, Newsday, The Village Voice, Outside, Men's Journal, Inside Sports, Adventure Cyclist, Runner's World, US, EcoTraveler, The Paddler, Sea Kayaker, Women's Sports & Fitness, and Brooklyn Bridge. He co-wrote (with Allen Barra) That's Not the Way It Was, a book about myths in sports.
A wildlife biologist who studied mountain goats and grizzlies in the Rockies, elephants in Africa, and whales in the world's oceans, Doug Chadwick also writes about natural history, conservation, and wildlife around the world, from right whales in the sub-Antarctic to snow leopards in the Himalayas, producing close to fifty articles for National Geographic magazine. In addition, he has written thirteen books about wildlife and conservation, including The Wolverine Way, Tracking Gobi Grizzlies, Yellowstone to Yukon and the lead chapter in Crown of the Continent: The Wildest Rockies, a photographic celebration of the region's wildlife and scenic majesty.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Product details
- Publisher : Patagonia; First Edition (October 9, 2018)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 288 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1938340728
- ISBN-13 : 978-1938340727
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.5 x 1 x 9.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #574,926 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #69 in Biology of Cats, Lions & Tigers
- #411 in Biology of Mammals
- #1,387 in Environmentalism
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Jim Williams has spent his entire life finding the wild. Jim left the farm country of Iowa and spent his formative years as a young surf bum turned biology student in the Pacific Beach area of San Diego. He did his undergraduate work at San Diego State and Florida State Universities and his graduate studies at Montana State University in Bozeman. Jim is an award-winning, professionally certified wildlife biologist and has been working for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks for 30 years.
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The most obvious way wild pumas cross human paths is their proximity to cities and towns with corresponding concern about small children and animals (to protect people (a major concern), the zone-management policy is to kill pumas who become habituated to suburban areas); their feeding on domestic livestock when they find insufficient deer, caribou, elk, guanaco, and other animals; and, until 2006, the reduction of their population, primarily by outfitters who brought out-of-staters to Montana during hunting season.
The less obvious ways are revealed by Williams’ professional expertise and stories. He begins with personal experiences as a grad student, ending with modern-day insights. He describes one of his first, solo tracking expeditions where he lay under a tree at night, well aware that this was grizzly territory and “I heard every hoot owl and coyote cry, every twig, snap…” He describes a modern-day hunt after he and a pilot spotted a puma chasing a bighorn sheep. He notified the capture team and they “responded like an Indy 500 pit crew”, by releasing the hounds, then tracking, treeing, tranquilizing and tagging the big cat. He mentions being pushed around by local ranchers initially, later helping them set up fences, and ultimately realizing they were the best allies he could have. (Much more detail in the book – he’s a good storyteller.)
He was instrumental in setting up Montana FWP’s annual lottery for hunting licenses, instituted in 2006, which helped to control wildlife populations that were being reduced too much, maintained access for hunters, and provided income to FWP to manage its wildlife programs. Williams is a hunter, too.
He discusses animal corridors and even has a photo of a wildlife crossing structure in Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada. In fact, the book is packed with full-size, color photos throughout. He covers housing subdivisions encroaching on animal habitats, rewilding, DNA analysis, the need for biodiversity, how protection of smaller animals has had positive repercussions up the food chain, and how lion kills ultimately end up feeding many animals down the food chain.
One issue he alludes to repeatedly throughout the book; finding ways to maintain the ecosystem so that it benefits wildlife and continues to provide economic benefits to humans. Another common thread; the biggest dangers to wildlife are from humans. One example; we build roads making their hidden places more accessible to poachers and reducing their open spaces.
Williams suggests we consider choosing the way of human tolerance and protected habitats, because it defines us. His last pages list organizations and websites one can visit to support wildlife, and what to do if you happen to encounter a puma. His book’s website: pathofthepuma.com.
Top reviews from other countries
The book transports you to America’s wilds. As we hear from the author’s experiences we get snippets of data, the sense of each landscape, and the vibes of the local communities. Williams is first and foremost a biologist using science to inform, but he appreciates the people and the places that influence the fortunes of cougars. In his holistic treatment we get the full context of the puma’s natural and human habitat. We meet characters in the Montana bar where Williams loitered as a student, we hear about the helicopter pilots, the ranchers, and the houndsmen who help the author get close to his subject and achieve his fieldwork, and we even learn names of the tracking hounds. There is no whiff of elitism. These rugged locals are treated as equals along with the author’s professional colleagues and peers – they all influence the great outdoors where cougars roam. The chapter explaining the shift to a lottery system for Montana’s hunting season is masterful. Williams depicts the tensions among different groups as the great haggle over future shooting quotas occurred. Here and throughout the book we read how he stands up for pumas, but he treats people and their bias and their special interests with respect, and he avoids any suggestion that he knows best, and that his research should inevitably trump other people’s values.
A great advantage of the book comes through Williams’ experience from visits to South America as well as his familiar US Western States, especially Montana. He can compare the behaviour, the prey base and the habitats of the puma through these different lands and amongst their different peoples. Even the distinction of the cowboys and the gauchos is relevant.
The book is packed with observations on the science and the behaviour of pumas. The author tries to see all stakeholders’ perspectives. He invites us to interpret and understand the puma not as something good or bad, depending on how it affects different people, but for what it is, on its own terms: a predator doing its job in the ecosystem.
I have few grumbles with the book, but in such an accomplished work I was surprised Williams did not relate the resilient puma to its counterfeit in other lands, the leopard. There are many parallel points of interest between puma and leopard, with these cryptic and generalist carnivores managing to co-exist with humans despite our bungling nature and our different shades of tolerance.
The author inhabits and visits wild, remote, awesome landscapes. We mainly hear of the life of pumas in Montana and Patagonia. Ok, he notes the different behaviours of some South American pumas and there is a chapter on pumas habituating to residential areas and suburban gardens in Montana and we know this happens elsewhere in Western States from media reports. Williams also notes that pumas can seep across the landscape and are dispersing east in the US. But there is an inevitable bias in the strand of puma that features in the book – Williams is mainly discussing the ultimate ‘mountain lion’. Pumas are resourceful as we know. They can hack it in middle-ground landscapes and mixed farmland. The concept of optimum habitat can be overplayed for such a versatile predator. Williams rightly and repeatedly calls for the great cat to have “freedom to roam”, he promotes habitat connectivity and he reminds us that human tolerance greatly influences the fate of this animal. Yes indeed, and that freedom and those tolerances can extend across many different terrains, as long as there is natural prey.
The book's range of colour photographs make a major contribution. They feature people, landscapes and wildlife linked to compelling parts of the text, and glimpses of the author doing his fieldwork at different ages.
The text size might be a touch too small for some people, and the photo captions need a magnifying glass.
But I can only resort to minor nit-picking. This is a gem of a book.








