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Although cougars (Puma concolor) appear to be recolonizing the midwestern United States, there is concern that hunting in source populations may prevent cougars from dispersing eastward. We use carcass data of cougars in the Midwest collected during 1990–2015 to quantify whether cougar hunting in the Black Hills affected cougar distribution and presence in the Midwest.

Recent work has focused on development of methods that integrate multiple streams of data to model species distributions. Combining sources of information increases spatial coverage and can improve accuracy in estimates of species distributions. However, when fusing multiple streams of data, the temporal and spatial resolutions of data sources may be mismatched.

The use of camera traps as a tool for studying wildlife populations is commonplace. However, few have considered how the number of detections of wildlife differ depending upon the number of camera traps placed at cameras-sites, and how this impacts estimates of occupancy and community composition.