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US Officials Declare Eastern Cougar Extinct

mikeyx said:
quarky said:
I wonder how cougars cross the Mississippi river?
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again, oversimplification as a dodge.
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What the devil is your problem? It seems like a perfectly reasonable question to me.

How does one "oversimplify" a question about how cougars get across a bloody great river?

What exactly is it that you believe quarky is dodging?


In any case it seems that the question was perfectly valid, and answered quite nicely by WP:


William Parcher said:
There are a number of possible ways.

Swim
Cross on a bridge
Cross on ice

However, the river does act as a natural barrier. You can see this by looking at the cougar map...


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mikeyx said:
Im saying that you dont need to make the case for a native Eastern population, they can migrate from elsewhere, and they have. They are here. Deal with it.
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Or what?


Again, I have to ask, what is your problem? Why so much emotion about a simple wildlife question?
 
mikeyx said:
Im saying that you dont need to make the case for a native Eastern population, they can migrate from elsewhere, and they have. They are here. Deal with it.
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Are you saying the Western population of cougars has managed to establish a breeding population in the EAST, despite the Mississippi river's presence as an insurmountable obstacle?

Have the cougars managed to come down through Michigan's upper peninsula, through Detroit, Ann Arbor, Cleveland, Toledo, across the Ohio River, and into the mountains of W. Virginia, Kentucky, and the Carolinas, establish a breeding population, without the benefit of females?

I think you are oversimplifying. Parcher is using common sense, you are basically saying "POOF, there are cougars in the east"
 
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Akhenaten said:
In any case it seems that the question was perfectly valid, and answered quite nicely by WP:
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Yes, I also am puzzled by all the emotion about this. And I totally get how one could have cougars in the east that aren't Eastern cougars.

But I'm especially curious about the little dot on the map in southwestern Illinois. While the isolated dots in other places like mountainous WV and so forth might be remnant populations, possible escapes that established a breeding population, deliberate attempts to establish a population or something oddball like that, that Illinois dot looks like a natural expansion of territory, except it's on the other side of the Mississippi.

Looks like it's legit, too: "In Illinois, a cougar was killed by a train in 2000 near Chester, about 60 miles southeast of St. Louis."

Is there anything in that area which would make it easy for cougars to get across? An isolated bridge in a wooded area, a couple islands to break up the swim, something like that?
 
Pup said:
Yes, I also am puzzled by all the emotion about this. And I totally get how one could have cougars in the east that aren't Eastern cougars.

But I'm especially curious about the little dot on the map in southwestern Illinois. While the isolated dots in other places like mountainous WV and so forth might be remnant populations, possible escapes that established a breeding population, deliberate attempts to establish a population or something oddball like that, that Illinois dot looks like a natural expansion of territory, except it's on the other side of the Mississippi.

Looks like it's legit, too: "In Illinois, a cougar was killed by a train in 2000 near Chester, about 60 miles southeast of St. Louis."

Is there anything in that area which would make it easy for cougars to get across? An isolated bridge in a wooded area, a couple islands to break up the swim, something like that?
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My quip upstream about the the coyotes actually has some relevance to the thread. Territorial expansion has been observed for some species from the western US northward to Canada, then eastward, and then southward again, thus circumventing the natural barrier that the Mississippi River forms.
 
William Parcher said:
It wouldn't be, and presently isn't, roadkill or hunting - it's lack of females. There is a distinct differential in dispersion away from established breeding populations based on gender. Females don't wander/roam.
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"Presently" I'd agree with you. Looking ahead, I can't see why females wouldn't also eventually disperse eastward, though at a slower rate than those pioneering young males.
 
Akhenaten said:
What the devil is your problem? It seems like a perfectly reasonable question to me.

How does one "oversimplify" a question about how cougars get across a bloody great river?

What exactly is it that you believe quarky is dodging?


In any case it seems that the question was perfectly valid, and answered quite nicely by WP:








Or what?


Again, I have to ask, what is your problem? Why so much emotion about a simple wildlife question?
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Thank you for defending what's left of my honor. I am touched.

gosh and shucks,

quarky
 
Damien Evans said:
Your reasoning is awful. In addition, the Platypus is reasonably common, though due to their habits not often seen by the layperson.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus
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The platypus has the brain of a dolphin
and can be seen driving a forklift in his habitat of kelp
He is the larva of the flatworm
and has the ability to regenerate after injury

No relation to the flounder.
 
We're always told of the risks of animals facing extinction, so I'm wondering, when should I expect the ecosystem of the USA to collapse?
 
The eastern cougar phenomenon has too often lacked a basis of scientific inquiry. Michael Shermer (1997) points out some of the pitfalls of a non-scientific approach that characterize much of the eastern puma controversy:

Anecdotes, unverified stories recounted in support of a claim, do not make science. Corroborative/supportive evidence from other sources, physical proof, or controlled experiments are needed to support the hypothesis that a population of eastern pumas still exists.

Rumors do not equal reality. The number of alleged puma photographs and emails circulating the internet do not prove that a populations exists (most have been proven hoaxes).

Scientific language does not make a science. Papers written in scientific format, but based on unconfirmed puma occurrences or poor methodology do not prove the existence of pumas in eastern North America.

Bold statements do not make claims true. The more extraordinary the claim, the more extraordinarily well-tested the evidence must be.

Burden of proof. The person making the extraordinary claim has the burden of proving to the experts and to the community at large that his or her belief has more validity than almost everyone else accepts. The burden of proof is on those claiming that a puma population still exists in eastern North America to provide solid scientific evidence in support of their claims.

Failures are rationalized. In science, negative findings are just as important as positive findings. If a population of pumas exists, there should be ample evidence (tracks, scat, animals killed, trapped). Surveys have failed to produce this evidence.

Representativeness. Aristotle said, “The sum of the coincidences equals certainty.” Our tendency is to remember promising evidence (e.g., a puma kitten was killed in Kentucky), but ignore the details (the kitten had South American genes).

Ad ignorantiam. The argument that if you cannot prove something does not exist, then it must exist. In science, belief should come from positive evidence in support of a claim, not lack of evidence for or against the claim.

Hasty generalization. Conclusions are drawn before the facts warrant it. A puma killed in Pennsylvania in 1967 does not prove that a remnant population exists.

Credo consolans. People maintain unrealistic ideas because these ideas maintain a sense of mystery in an increasingly industrialized, predictable, scientific world. The existence of a puma population provides hope that nature can heal itself from our past transgressions.

Communal reinforcement. When claims become beliefs through repeated assertions by members of a community or when the media provide tacit support for untested and unsupported claims by providing no skepticism about even the most outlandish claims.
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From USFWS 5-year Review on Eastern Cougar.
 
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