Esther and I were finally successful in tagging along with Kyle and Aliah on a cougar capture -- they are doing cougar research near Nordegg (Kyle's PhD) which (partially) involves finding, capturing and GPS-collaring cougars. This is the part we came along for.
The GPS collars come off when the batteries are (close to) dead. Kyle, Aliah and (volunteer) crew collect data off them via VHF radios, analyze it (for example, by clustering it [I helped with this software]) and then doing field work looking for kill sites, dens, feces, etcetera to see where the kitties go, what they eat and how they die.
There has been no cougar research done in Alberta. In the zones near Nordegg, 29 cougar hunting tags are issued per year.
Measuring Kitty
Cougar in the tree