The cougar Puma concolor was part of the pre-European fauna of the north-eastern USA. It was extirpated in the late 1800s and since the late 1900s there have been discussions concerning its reintroduction to the region. One site considered is Adirondack State Park in northern New York. In 1981 an assessment of the feasibility of returning cougars concluded that the Park had adequate prey and forest cover to support a small population of cougars but that conflicts with humans would cause the demise of this population within 10 years. Thus reintroduction at that time was not advised. Since then knowledge of cougar ecology and how cougars interact with humans has increased substantially. Based on information compiled since the 1980s I conducted a landscape-scale analysis to assess whether cougars could live in the Park. The results indicate that cougars could occupy 15,300–17,000 km2 (61–69%) of the Park, with minimal contact with human habitation. Based on reported cougar densities the Park could support a population of 150–350 cougars. These cougars would consume < 10% of the adult deer population annually and fawn production would be sufficient to replace these losses. Human and road densities in the Park are similar to those of the Black Hills, South Dakota and southern Florida, both of which have viable populations of cougars. I concluded that Adirondack State Park could support a population of cougars. What is now required is the will to bring them back.

Understanding the resource needs of animals is critical to their management and conservation. Resource utilization functions (RUFs) provide a framework to investigate animal-resource relationships by characterizing variation in the amount of resource use. In this context a ‘resource’ is any aspect of a species' fundamental niche that can be mapped throughout the area of investigation (such as study area or home range). Extensive global positioning system (GPS) data from 17 cougars (Puma concolor) demonstrate the utility and potential challenges of estimating RUFs within the home range for far-ranging species. Ninety-nine per cent utilization distributions (UDs) estimated using bivariate plug in, univariate least-squares cross-validation and reference bandwidth selection methods were compared. Distance to water, per cent clear-cut and regenerating forest, and slope were used to estimate cougar RUFs. UDs derived from GPS data were more refined, and plug-in UDs were least similar to UDs derived from other bandwidths. RUFs were resilient to variation in the smoothing parameter, with all methods yielding coefficients that largely reflected observations of foraging ecology and behaviour. Cougars were individualistic, but use was generally positively associated with the presence of regenerating forest and inversely associated with steep slopes. Advances in technology allow for greater accuracy and resolution of the UD, but software improvements and spatially explicit information on animal behaviour are needed to better understand resource use.