I have been keeping track of cougar attacks in the US and Canada going back to 2000 that are reported by the media or published in books and articles. I am mainly interested in the number of attacks, their approximate locations, and what was done to thwart potential attacks.
I define an attack as an incident in which a wild cougar inflicts an injury or fatality on a human, anything from a scratch to a fatality. Injuries incurred when someone is scratched or otherwise harmed while rescuing their dog does not count.
Fig. 1 gives a map of attack locations from 2000 to 2013.
Fig. 1. Map of all attack locations from 2000 to 2013. The heavy black line denotes the approximate range of cougars after they were extirpated in the Midwest and East, but before recolonization of parts of South Dakota, possibly North Dakota, and Nebraska began, outlined in thin black lines. There are now two more small recolonized areas in Nebraska not yet shown on the map. Click on the map for a larger version.
My list of attacks from 2000 to date is given in the linked Word document (this document isn't updated as often as the spreadsheet linked below).
I also keep track of thwarted attacks, in which it appears that the lion would have attacked if action hadn't been taken. The list of all attacks, including thwarted ones and even some that might not actually have resulted in an attack, is given in a
spreadsheet summarizing attacks from 2000 to date (this links to a .csv file that can be opened in any spreadsheet program and most word processors; right click on the link and select "file - save as").
See also Tom Chester's Mountain Lion Attacks On People in the U.S. and Canada.