SALT LAKE CITY ( ABC4 ) — In May of 2022, a female cougar dubbed F66 left her home in the Wasatch mountains and undertook a 1,000-mile journey through Wyoming, eastern Utah and most of Colorado.
It was the longest trek ever recorded in a GPS-collared cougar, according to Morgan Hinton, a wildlife biologist with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources , who wrote about F66’s journey in a blog post published this week.
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“She crossed I-80 twice, which was incredible, as well as some other major highways in Utah and Colorado,” Hinton said, adding that F66 also swam across Flaming Gorge Reservoir in southern Wyoming.
While she was killed by another cougar in Colorado, her incredible five-month journey is just one narrative example of how GPS collars are allowing Utah researchers to get more precise data on the behavior of the elusive cats in all manner of categories, from movement to prey.
“We are only now realizing these things are happening because we have the ability to track these animals on a really fine scale,” Hinton told ABC4 on Wednesday.