US Officials Declare Eastern Cougar Extinct

[LTC8K6]

Uh oh. We have one that looks just like that. Now I'll need to get an exotic animal keeper's license.

From the article:



So the "cougar" is six to eight feet high at the shoulder, sitting down?

I told you, it's a 450 pound Bengal tiger, well camoflaged...someone is feeding it 50 pounds of fresh meat every few days.

 

[Blackdog]

Here's a real doozy for ya.

Cougar killed in Connecticut traced to S.D., Minnesota

HARTFORD, Conn. - A mountain lion killed on a Connecticut highway last month had apparently walked halfway across the country from South Dakota, according to Connecticut environmental officials who said Tuesday that the 1,500-mile journey was one of the longest ever recorded for a land mammal.
The animal originated in the Black Hills region of South Dakota and was tracked by DNA from its hair and droppings as it passed through Minnesota and Wisconsin in 2009 and 2010, Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Daniel Esty said at a news conference.
Biologists estimate the size of the mountain lion population at about 100,000 nationwide, mostly living in the western United States and seldom traveling more than 100 miles. It was the first confirmed wild mountain lion in Connecticut in more than 100 years.
"It is a testament to the adaptability of the species that it can travel so far from its original home in South Dakota to Connecticut," Esty said.
The lean, 140-pound male was killed June 11 when it was hit by a sport utility vehicle at night on the Wilbur Cross Parkway in the New Haven suburb of Milford.
Authorities initially believed it was a captive animal that escaped, but tests showed that it was not neutered or declawed and it had no implanted microchips, which are commonly used in domestic animals.
Tests also determined it was likely the same one that had been seen earlier in Greenwich, Conn., a New York City suburb 30 miles away. The death was followed by a flurry of big cat sightings in the suburbs of Connecticut, but experts dismissed most of them as unreliable. Government experts say no native mountain lions are believed to live in Connecticut.
Genetic testing showed the cat had the same genetic structure of the mountain lion population in South Dakota's Black Hills region. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service Wildlife Genetics Laboratory in Missoula, Mont., matched the DNA with samples collected from a cat that was tracked in Minnesota and Wisconsin from late 2009 through early 2010.

 

[William Parcher]

He was truckin'.

 

[Drewbot]

This was not unexpected, other than the incredible distance it traveled. I told Themanta that it was either of S. American or western origin. Parcher said it in this thread.

The idea that Eastern cougars were not wiped out in Connecticut is silly. Now knowing the distance one of these can travel, must make Eastern cougar woo-woos reevaluate their position.

 

[mikeyx]

This was not unexpected, other than the incredible distance it traveled. I told Themanta that it was either of S. American or western origin. Parcher said it in this thread.

The idea that Eastern cougars were not wiped out in Connecticut is silly. Now knowing the distance one of these can travel, must make Eastern cougar woo-woos reevaluate their position.

nope............ you obsessively clung to th escape south american crap, south dakota aint in south america and you were a) wrong and b) full of it

 

[Drewbot]

nope............ you obsessively clung to th escape south american crap, south dakota aint in south america and you were a) wrong and b) full of it

Post 145, this thread, clear as day.

They're there, and they're not all pets from south american. Forest through the trees.....

Right, some of them are male wanderers from the Florida population or the Western population.

Care to revise that first part?

 

[The Shrike]

Very cool. I attended a lecture a few years ago by Jon Jenks who has headed up cougar research in the Black Hills for many years. He had many cool anecdotes of what seemed like extraordinary dispersal events, but this SD–CT one takes the cake. In that part of the world, I'm really wondering how it crossed the Hudson. . .

Example of Jenks' work:

Dispersal movements of subadult cougars from the Black Hills: the notions of range expansion and recolonization

D. J. Thompson1,† and J. A. Jenks
Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences, South Dakota State University, Brookings, South Dakota 57007 USA

Dispersal plays a vital role in cougar (Puma concolor) population ecology, creating genetic viability and maintaining gene flow between populations. The naturally recolonized cougar population in the Black Hills is at the edge of the species' range in North America and completely surrounded by the grasslands of the Northern Great Plains. Our objective was to document dispersal movements and possible range expansion of subadult cougars captured within the Black Hills ecosystem of southwestern South Dakota and eastern Wyoming. Twenty-four (n = 14 males, n = 10 females) subadult cougars were captured in the Black Hills. Independence of cougars from females averaged 13.5 months (range = 10–16 months) from parturition; dispersal occurred 1–3 months post independence. Males dispersed (mean = 274.7 km SE 88.3) farther than females (mean = 48.0 km SE 10.9), with females exhibiting 40% philopatry. We documented several (n = 6) long-distance dispersal movements (>250 km) of male cougars and hypothesize that males making long-distance movements were in search of available mates. The long-distance cougar dispersal movements documented by our study indicate that range expansion and habitat recolonization are occurring and further suggest proactive efforts to increase public knowledge of cougar ecology in areas where cougars are recolonizing previously occupied range.

Key words: Black Hills, cougar, dispersal, long-distance dispersal, Puma concolor, range expansion, recolonization, South Dakota, Wyoming

Received 12 August 2010; revised 13 September 2010; accepted 27 September 2010; published 27 October 2010.

Corresponding Editor: M. Oli.

1 Present address: Wyoming Game and Fish Department, Trophy Game Section, Lander, Wyoming 82520 USA.

† E-mail: Daniel.Thompson@wgf.state.wy.us

 

[William Parcher]

In that part of the world, I'm really wondering how it crossed the Hudson. . .

Haven't had your coffee yet?

Swim.
Cross ice.
Cross bridge.


These far wandering males are genetic dead ends. They will probably spend their lives fruitlessly roaming in search of females. They just keep walking because they find no females and aren't constrained by any competing territorial males. If I just walk a little further I will find my babe. Nope. Forced celibacy until death. This kind of thing didn't happen hundreds or thousands of years ago because there wasn't a situation where 1/3 of the land region was devoid of females.

This male was caught on trailcam in Wisconsin and we can see that then he still had traces of kitten spots...

 

[roger]

Can you imagine being a wildlife official in the Eastern States? These things are presented to you with some regularity. Then there are the eyewitness reports with no presented evidence at all. Day after day, year after year, decade after decade, no cougars.

It's worth noting that bobcats and lynxes look like large house cats, whereas mountain lions look like adolescent lions. Having seen both(no lynxes here) in the wild close up, I can say the bobcat gives you the natural response of "oh! Kitty! Big kitty!", and a cougar turns your blood cold as you no longer feel like you are at the top of the food chain. It's pretty visceral - like our response to snakes and spiders.

 

[The Shrike]

Haven't had your coffee yet?
Swim.
Cross ice.
Cross bridge.

Well, I mean more like which one of such options did it actually do, not that I couldn't fathom how it could get across. I'm really curious about the route too, as in other than just "east."

 

[William Parcher]

no lynxes here

They are not far from you. Lynx have been successfully reintroduced to Colorado (after extirpation). I just read that they are as far north as Summit county.

I'm really curious about the route too, as in other than just "east."

Probably not a beeline east. They can move many miles mainly at night.

 

[The Shrike]

On a broad level, I'd simply like to know if it went north or south of the Great Lakes.

 

[Bigfooter]

It seems to me that we're playing a semantics game here.

The bottom line is that we now have proof that big cats exist in the Eastern United States outside of Florida. We also have proof that they aren't simply escapees from a game farm. This after years of being told they didn't exist or that those that have been killed/sighted are simply anomolies.

Does it really matter how they got here or that they're not really Eastern Mountain Lions?

 

[William Parcher]

On a broad level, I'd simply like to know if it went north or south of the Great Lakes.

Or "through" the GL using the land bridge corridor between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. The trailcam capture in Wisconsin was Clark County. From there it could have gone eastward three different ways: north of Lake Superior, through the gap between L. Superior and L. Michigan, or south of L. Michigan

It seems to me that we're playing a semantics game here...

Does it really matter how they got here or that they're not really Eastern Mountain Lions?

You are the one playing a game. There is no functional evidence of wild cougars living in the east. This dead one that walked from South Dakota cannot serve as a proxy representative for any and all others that you would like to propose.

 

[LTC8K6]

It took a freight train.

 

[LTC8K6]

If it doesn't matter how they got there, then what do we call those pythons in Florida?

 

[William Parcher]

Bigfoots are out there.
Eastern cougars are out there.

Why stop there?

An indian friend has told me that she knows that griz have been imported to Tennessee's back country.

 

[Bigfooter]

Or "through" the GL using the land bridge corridor between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. The trailcam capture in Wisconsin was Clark County. From there it could have gone eastward three different ways: north of Lake Superior, through the gap between L. Superior and L. Michigan, or south of L. Michigan



You are the one playing a game. There is no functional evidence of wild cougars living in the east. This dead one that walked from South Dakota cannot serve as a proxy representative for any and all others that you would like to propose.

I'm not proposing any others, but there is "functional evidence" that at least one wild cougar was living in the east.

You have to at least admit that.

Shouldn't we be asking why it moved so far beyond its accepted range? And if it did, are others doing that as well.

If there are big cats moving east, this is a public safety issue that needs to be at least discussed does it not? We're not talking the wide open Dakotas or the sparsely populated mountains of CA, we're talking Greenwich CT. Folks aren't going to like it when Bootsie gets mauled trying to load little Payton into the Range Rover in the parking lot at Whole Foods.

 

[Drewbot]

Not an eastern cougar.

 

[Bigfooter]

Not an eastern cougar.

You guys seem to be missing my point. This is what I mean by folks getting caught up in semantics.

Does it really matter if it was an Eastern or Western Cougar?

There WAS a cougar and it had been on a 1,500 mile meander across half the country for several years now. Now it may have been simply an anomaly and will never happen again, but can we be certain of that? And, fine, let's say it doesn't happen again, what about Western Cougars moving, say, only 500 or 750 miles east.

I'm simply saying that further study is warranted and that the "nope, never, not gonna happen" approach is probalby not the best given the human population in these areas.