Determining minimum habitat areas and habitat corridors for cougars

Beier combined population modeling with movement and habitat data to estimate how much habitat a cougar population needs to persist and how corridors connecting habitat patches reduce extinction risk. The analysis showed that even relatively large habitat blocks could lose their cougars to demographic and genetic problems if isolated, but that a single functional corridor allowing occasional immigration substantially improved persistence. The work provided some of the first quantitative, defensible targets for reserve size and corridor function for a large carnivore, grounding the abstract idea of connectivity in concrete numbers. It became highly influential in conservation planning for southern California pumas and beyond, and it helped establish corridors as essential infrastructure for maintaining felid populations in fragmented, urbanizing landscapes.