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US Officials Declare Eastern Cougar Extinct

Note: my wild speculation was not objective. I was trying to route the cat through the old family farm in the Mohawk Valley. (It's as good a route as any.)
 
Bigfooter said:
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.
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Well, we might have a situation where W.Cougars repopulate the east due to movement. But again, that would merely be an eastern population of W.Cougar.
Fine then. I'll shut up about it. I agree that Eastern Cougars are extinct. I always have. My posts were an attempt to engage in a discussion about the implications of migrating cougars and their impact on areas with large human populations.

Perhaps I should start a new thread about that.
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Perhaps I missed your point then, but when you responded to drewbot with

Originally Posted by Drewbot
Not an eastern cougar.
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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?
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Drewbot was pointing out that it was not and Eastern Cougar, and I got the impression that you thought that this was merely semantics rather than the point that drewbot was discussing taxonomy.
 
What he might be getting at, and what is pointed out in the recent reccomendation to de-list the Eastern Cougar, is that the two species are not much different, in fact I have read that the genetic differences between the Eastern and Western subspecies is not significant enough to warrant sub-species designation.

Wikipedia said:
Until the late 1980s, as many as 32 subspecies were recorded; however, a recent genetic study of mitochondrial DNA[17] found that many of these are too similar to be recognized as distinct at a molecular level. Following the research, the canonical Mammal Species of the World (3rd edition) recognizes six subspecies, five of which are solely found in Latin America:[1]
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Drewbot said:
What he might be getting at, and what is pointed out in the recent reccomendation to de-list the Eastern Cougar, is that the two species are not much different, in fact I have read that the genetic differences between the Eastern and Western subspecies is not significant enough to warrant sub-species designation.
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Ah, a different argument altogether and one which I'd be inclined to agree with him on (since I have no dog (or cat) in this fight).
 
mikeyx said:
I for one, am not advocating eastern cougars, its more like cougars are in the east, they are out there. They may have simply come east, but they are here...
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Bigfooter said:
The bottom line is that we now have proof that big cats exist in the Eastern United States outside of Florida.
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Genetics is besides their point/argument. They are both saying that wild cougars are living in Eastern States.

The problem is that there is no functional evidence showing that this is true.
 
William Parcher said:
But that does not appear to be the argument that Bigfooter and mikeyx are making.
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No it does not appear to be the argument they are making. I was giving Bigfooter the chance to clarify his response that Ehocking quoted above.

In fact, Mikeyx thinks there are breeding populations of the creatures in the East, which is preposterous, given the lack of evidence.

There is a huge difference between one cat, and a viable population of the creatures.
 
Bigfooter actually contradicted himself and I showed it in post #181...

Bigfooter said:
The bottom line is that we now have proof that big cats exist in the Eastern United States outside of Florida.
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Bigfooter said:
I'm not proposing any others
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Cougars exist in the East and we have proof.
I'm not saying any cougars exist in the East.

:confused:
 
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EHocking said:
Well, we might have a situation where W.Cougars repopulate the east due to movement. But again, that would merely be an eastern population of W.Cougar.Perhaps I missed your point then, but when you responded to drewbot with

Drewbot was pointing out that it was not and Eastern Cougar, and I got the impression that you thought that this was merely semantics rather than the point that drewbot was discussing taxonomy.
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It is semantics and the lengths that Drew will go to to not be wrong, he was obsessed with the idea of escaped pets and mentioned the Western factor once to cya, but.. the argument was are they in the east, YES, yes they are.

Drew, wrong, done.
 
William Parcher said:
But that does not appear to be the argument that Bigfooter and mikeyx are making.
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The Eastern Cougar Network keeps track of things like this and again the devil is in the details. The argument that they are not here in the east is ********, they are here, and if they can get to CT from SD, there clearly is nothing keeping them out. I dont recall ever saying it was a breeding population, just that imperically they are here. How they came to be here who know.

I know of a situation in the Northern Connecticut corner where off the record, wolf presence has been proven, one was shot, they have the body (DEP) and the id was made. It doesnt mean it was from CT just that it's here now. They in fact suspected migration.

The issue I take with Drew's know it all attitude is he and others have been quick to jump to an interbreeding argument in that case, whereas with cougars, its pets getting out case closed. ********.

The migratory angle is much more feasible but opens up more possibilities as well, and frankly showcases Drew's short sightedness in this matter. Yes, he passingly allowed for migratory cougars, but he has laways emphasized the escaped pet angle and that turns out not to be the case. It shows how quickly some are to assume and then dodge when the assumption comes up short.
 
Cougars are not in the east.

A couple of cougars that got to the east somehow, does not allow such a broad statement, imo.

It is literally true, in that wild cougars have been found, but you can't really say much more than that.
 
LTC8K6 said:
Cougars are not in the east.

A couple of cougars that got to the east somehow, does not allow such a broad statement, imo.

It is literally true, in that wild cougars have been found, but you can't really say much more than that.
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This is getting stupid, half full vs half empty. They are here, not in huge breeding numbers but that wasn't my argument, they are in fact here. The failed misdirect is they some have claimed the arguemnt is they are breeding here, not what I said. Regardless of how, watch the news, they ARE here. You guys are just dickering as to the how, and still claiming to be right. You're not.
 
It's not like there is a gaggle of young male cougars in the Black Hills ready to bolt to New England as soon as they can break away from their mothers. The animal killed in CT demonstrated a truly extraordinary dispersal distance. To assume that such dispersal events are routine would be like (only way more so) observing Blake Griffin's alley-oop over the Kia and assuming that we humans do that sort of thing all the time.

Outside of Peninsular Florida, the vast majority of cougars reported over the last several decades have been - and continue to be - housecats, bobcats, dogs, etc. For the small number of cases in which some physical evidence has been obtained that there actually was a cougar, it is still a more parsimonious explanation that a privately-owned cat escaped or was released than that a wild cat dispersed to the eastern U.S. all the way from the Black Hills or elsewhere along the eastern front of its range.

But resident, home-grown, cougars of the "eastern" subspecies occupying their former range? No way. They're long gone.
 
mikeyx said:
Cougars do exist in the east, its the matter of how they get here. They're not all pets. Drew was wrong.
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Any cougar found in the East is an escaped pet, except for the outlier samples of western male cougars which have trekked into the area.

I even posted a study which showed DNA samples, and that most of them were S. American origin. What are you trying to show here?
 
mikeyx said:
This is getting stupid, half full vs half empty. They are here, not in huge breeding numbers but that wasn't my argument, they are in fact here. The failed misdirect is they some have claimed the arguemnt is they are breeding here, not what I said. Regardless of how, watch the news, they ARE here. You guys are just dickering as to the how, and still claiming to be right. You're not.
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It's all empty. A few are here, by odd chance. That's it.

Attempting to turn that into "Cougars are inhabiting the Eastern US" is folly.
 
We know that there are escaped pets, there are DNA samples from those, that came back as being from S. America. We know there is the one that trekked from S. Dakota.

Those are the few.
 
There have been escaped pets living in the East, or there are some presently living in the East?
 
William Parcher said:
There have been escaped pets living in the East, or there are some presently living in the East?
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Well, the individual killed in CT was living in "the East" (as in well east of the current distribution of cougars in the U.S., save Florida) from at least December 2009 to June 2011. That's at least a year and a half during which the animal was traveling, hunting, pooping, leaving prints, etc. That individual was clearly "living in the East" during this time, and could have been observed multiple times by multiple individuals anywhere from South Dakota to Connecticut.

Now that he's dead, could there still be others in the East? Sure, why not? I'm sure Jenks has multiple individuals from his database whose whereabouts are currently listed under "unknown."
 
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