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US Officials Declare Eastern Cougar Extinct

^ Thanks, Shrike.

So all cougars found in Ontario would be P. c. couguar, unless escaped members of one of the five Latin American subspecies? Or possibly an escaped P. c. coryi if one were to have had one as a pet? Probably quite a stretch for the latter two examples.
 
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dmaker said:
So all cougars found in Ontario would be P. c. couguar, unless escaped members of one of the five Latin American subspecies? Or possibly an escaped P. c. coryi if one were to have had one as a pet? Probably quite a stretch for the latter two examples.
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Yes, although escapes/releases of the Latin American subspecies are well-documented.

The tricky part concerns how well the taxonomists have delineated subspecies in northern Canada. It's a bit more plausible for a few remnant eastern cats to have persisted in northern Ontario or Quebec than in Kentucky or Virginia. Thusfar, all confirmed North American cougars in eastern North America have been the western subspecies.
 
The wilder parts of Ontario and maybe even Quebec and Labrador would be the only places I can imagine a remnant population of the Eastern subspecies could exist unobserved. Doesn't change the fact that the Eastern subspecies is extinct in the US, of course.
 
Arisia said:
The wilder parts of Ontario and maybe even Quebec and Labrador would be the only places I can imagine a remnant population of the Eastern subspecies could exist unobserved.
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Agreed, but even way up there it's problematic to envision them going undetected amid fur trade pressure and even subsistence use by First Nations people. Then there's the fact that as you get too far north into the boreal conditions favor lynx moreso than pumas. In other words, pumas might never have been all that common in the boreal forest, at least east of the Rockies.
 
We'll see if this new California photo gets used for an Eastern cougar hoax. It's been done many times before.
 
Citizens and police both misidentified a cougar in Washington - a place where cougars actually do exist.

Oregon Live said:
...Finally, on Saturday morning, Battle Ground police received another report of a cougar sighting at 9:30 a.m., near the 300 block of NE 10th Street. This sighting, police said in a news release, was confirmed by photos, which they circulated to the news media while noting that the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife was monitoring the situation.

By Saturday evening, however, Battle Ground police sent out another news release:

"The photos provided by the reporting party of what was thought to be a juvenile cougar, has now proven to be nothing more than a house cat – a very substantial and fine looking cat indeed - but a house cat nonetheless."

The cat, katu.com reported, is named Ranger...
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https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2018/06/a_spate_of_metro_area_cougar_s.html
 
There are certainly dozens of mountain lions in N. Cal and some are seen, but most reports are false, mistaken for house cats, coyotes and other small fauna.
 
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Estimates put the mountain lion population in California at 4,000-6,000. I live in the Santa Cruz mountains, and there are probably around 500, some of which are spotted and photographed. Recently, one killed my friend's pet cat in front of an eye witness. They mostly hide and prey at night.
 
Parcher-
Do you think these are males from the North Dakota population? The article makes no mention that only males disperse from their home populations. Could there be a breeding female?

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news...ium=social&utm_campaign=snd&utm_content=wdiv4

If cougars are here, where did they come from?

Based on documented evidence, cougars observed in Michigan could be escaped or released pets. Or, they could be transient or dispersing cougars from the nearest known breeding populations in North and South Dakota. These populations are over 900 miles from Michigan.
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Yes, these are likely and logically males dispersing from the Dakotas. Even just one animal could account for many sightings and photos.

This demonstrates that where cougars do exist we get confirmatory evidence of their presence. It's why we can be confident that there are few or none in the East. And those that do show up have made the journey from the Dakotas and are almost certainly males.
 
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William Parcher said:
Yes, these are likely and logically males dispersing from the Dakotas. Even just one animal could account for many sightings and photos.

This demonstrates that where cougars do exist we get confirmatory evidence of their presence. It's why we can be confident that there are few or none in the East. And those that do show up have made the journey from the Dakotas and are almost certainly males.
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William,
Here is the Michigan listing of all the sightings in 2020.
They make no declaration on if they are the same, but clearly some of the photos are from the same area.

https://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,4570,7-350-79135_79218_79619_84911-521554--,00.html
 
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