Remembering Yenewes: The Heart of the Olympic Peninsula 

When I first started working on the Olympic Cougar Project with Panthera, I was new to this world of cougars. In fact, not long before I joined Panthera, I had a very different relationship with cougars. I live on a small farm on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, and years ago I lost goats and sheep to a cougar depredation. My solution was much like many in my position — to kill the predator. Even though it broke my heart, it felt like the only way to protect what I loved and worked so hard to build.  
 
But life has a way of teaching us when we’re open to it. 
 
Years later, I lost goats yet again to a cougar. But this time, I did not want to kill the cougar. Instead, I wanted to find a way to coexist. That curiosity led me to Panthera’s Olympic Cougar Project, a long-term research endeavor aimed at understanding cougar populations, movement and survival on the Olympic Peninsula. The project is a collaboration between Panthera, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, the Makah tribe, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, Skokomish Tribe, Quinault Indian Nation, and Washington Department of Transportation. Working with tribal biologists and the people they represent has been essential to this work. These partnerships are not just about science — they are about listening to the people who have lived with these animals and this landscape for thousands of years and respecting the deep cultural connections to these cats and this place. 
 
Dr. Mark Elbroch, Panthera’s puma program director, showed me how to look for cougar sign. We discussed how I might become a better livestock owner, and I set up game cameras around my farm. Soon I discovered that I was in fact constantly sharing the landscape with not just one but many cougars.  
 
My viewpoint shifted. What started as fear of and frustrations with this carnivore turned into fascination. I wanted to understand these animals, not just protect my farm from them. I wanted to know how to live alongside them, how to become a better steward of both the land and my livestock. This internal shift impacted my life greatly, and I changed careers to join Panthera as a field technician on the Olympic Cougar Project. 
 
Soon I met Yenewes, a female cougar whose name means “Heart” in the Klallam language. She had been collared by and was being studied by Panthera scientists as part of the Olympic Cougar Project, but she was also my neighbor. Yen, as we affectionately called her, taught me new ways of being in the woods, and how to see the landscape differently. I learned what areas she frequented, where she liked to hunt, where she felt safe, and the sections of Highway 104 where she felt safe to cross.  
 
I learned how to track her signs — her footprints, scrapes, bed sites, and where she killed and cached her prey. She taught me to slow down, to see the forest through her eyes. 
 
One evening I was trailing her through the woods near our farm. I was following her subtle path through the brush, moving slowly and quietly and taking deliberate steps, listening for bird alarms and any sign that I was close. Suddenly there was a commotion ahead of me in the salmonberries and a quick, muffled yelp. As I approached her, she’d killed a coyote. I sat down, struck by her pure power and her stealth.

Later that month I watched Yenewes connect with a male cougar in our area and was able to film them together for a couple days.  A few months later, her data suggested she had a den, where I discovered four tiny kittens. We were able to set cameras and film intimate moments of Yenewes nursing and grooming. But life in the wild is rarely without heartbreak. Two of the kittens didn’t survive the first few weeks, and I felt that loss deeply. Still, Yenewes raised the two that remained with fierce devotion. I filmed them playing on logs and tumbling through the forest, their curiosity filling the woods with life. 

Recently, Yenewes was struck by a car on highway 104 and killed. It was early morning on a stretch of highway she knew and crossed frequently. Within an hour, I was called and was at her side — such is the network of people following our work and invested in local cougars. The people who hit her were shaken by the incident, and I found myself at a loss for words. Highways are unforgiving, even to the most experienced and capable. She left behind two orphaned kittens of four months of age, too young to survive on their own. (An effort was made to try to find them, but it was unsuccessful.) 

I often think about my history with cougars on the farm. I now know that the cougar who killed my goats all those years ago wasn’t my enemy. It was just a cougar being a cougar — most likely a young dispersing male or even a young one who had lost its own mother to some human-caused mortality and was just trying to survive. I’ve learned since then that coexistence isn’t just possible, it’s already happening. Yenewes hunted wild prey, she moved carefully around human spaces, and not once did I worry about her being near my farm, or others. I had faith that making changes to how I raise livestock not only protected my animals, it also protected cougars as well. My decisions supported the health of the entire ecosystem — it was an investment in my neighbors and community as much as myself. I encourage others to as well. In fact, part of my job currently is building livestock pens for a study on how carnivores react to different types of fencing in hopes of educating the public on how to share the landscape with these amazing animals. 
 
Another big part of our project is working with lots of collaborators to identify the best places for wildlife bridges and underpasses in southwest Washington — structures that make roads safer for the humans using them, and make them safer for the wildlife that cross them. We can’t build these things fast enough if you ask me. If there’d been one on this stretch of highway 104, maybe Yenewes and her kittens would have been provided safe passage, and the driver who hit her would have been saved the trauma of killing her and the costs of repairing their vehicle.  
 
I thought I would have years to keep learning from Yen. I thought I would follow her story for a long time. Instead, I’m left heartbroken — for her, for her two now-orphaned kittens, and for the life she still had to live. 
 
As scientists, we’re told not to get attached in this work. But it's impossible not to. We’re told that the animals we study and follow aren’t ours. And they definitely aren’t. I know this. Yet, Yenewes was the heart of this place. And without her, the forest feels a little quieter. 
 
Panthera is working to stabilize or grow puma populations in five key transcontinental strongholds and expand their range by 1.17 million km² by securing functional connectivity between population strongholds. In western Washington, we collaborate with the Lower Elwha Klallam, Skokomish, Makah, Jamestown S'Klallam, and Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribes, the Quinault Indian Nation, and the Washington State Department of Transportation on the Olympic Cougar Project, which aims to connect the genetically isolated pumas of the Olympic Peninsula with other puma populations in Washington State. We also work as part of several large collaborations assessing where and how to build bridges and underpasses along Interstate-5 to increase wildlife movements between the Cascade Mountains and the Olympic Peninsula, as well as work with a team of people tasked with creating a statewide connectivity action plan and a priority connectivity project list. Learn more about our work to connect and protect habitat for pumas and other wild cats.