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US Officials Declare Eastern Cougar Extinct

I have neighbors who swear they saw a cougar recently, but have no pictures.

I have seen pictures, but they look a lot like an artifact of light, leaves and shadow that makes a cougar-like image. If you squint.

We have many excellent wildlife photographers in the area, and good pix of many animals, but no good cougar pix.

So I say this situation has a lot in common with bigfoot. Not exactly the same, since we do know that cougars did exist, and they still might, but the sightings remind me a lot of bigfoot believers.
 
mikeyx said:
Nope, I have been open to the possibility of a small population breeding here, I never said it was huge,
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I'm open to that possibility too, but the evidence doesn't support this being the case. Therefore, the responsible and evidence-based opinion is that (other than in peninsular Florida) there are no populations of cougars breeding any farther east than the current eastern edge of the species' distribution in the Dakotas.

Nice people claiming to see cougars in recent decades in the eastern U.S. have time and again been shown to be mistaken. For the small number of cases in which a real, live cougar has been confirmed, most of those animals have apparently been escaped/released captives, i.e., not natural immigrants from the West. If Drew's comments "over time" (irrelevant to this thread, btw) have emphasized those released animals as the source of confirmed cougars in the Eastern U.S., then the data support his opinion. Regardless, he clearly stated in this thread that immigrants from the West are to be included in the realm of potential explanations for cougars confirmed in the East.
 
Statistically cougar sightings west of the Miss. River are mistakes or stories, the problem for wildlife officials, is that they are a real animal, and a statistically insignificant number of true reports(the escaped SA pets or the western/FL wanderers) makes these officials have to chase down many more reports than are neccessary.
Thanks be to Crom that they know bigfoot isn't real or they'd be chasing down all of those 'sightings' as well.
 
Drewbot said:
Statistically cougar sightings west of the Miss. River are mistakes or stories, the problem for wildlife officials, is that they are a real animal, and a statistically insignificant number of true reports(the escaped SA pets or the western/FL wanderers) makes these officials have to chase down many more reports than are neccessary.
Thanks be to Crom that they know bigfoot isn't real or they'd be chasing down all of those 'sightings' as well.
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spin it any way you want, your stance was only for escaped pets, which is crap
you're spinning it cuz the CT cougar was wanderer and didnt fit you blanket dismissal. Just like every BF report was a guy in a suit, couldn't possibly be a misidentification or something else. The problem isnt that you dismiss its that your dismissal is sloppy. You like opinion as if it were fact.
 
William Parcher said:
Your argument didn't specify that wild cougars in the East are "Eastern Cougars", and that is not what I'm asking you about. But here it is again...



The dead Connecticut cougar is proof of what again?
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That there was a cougar living in the Eastern United States.

Could you explain how that isn't accurate rather than just asking questions continually.
 
Bigfooter said:
That there was a cougar living in the Eastern United States.

Could you explain how that isn't accurate rather than just asking questions continually.
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It's like I'm talking to a brick wall.

Here it is again...

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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Note that you have used "big cats" which is plural and "exist" which is present tense. This is a kind of semantic trojan horse. The single wandering cougar which was killed is now serving as an example (you say proof) of others presently living in the East which have not been killed. But there is no functional evidence of any others. Just this one which got dead. This one is not proof of others.

It's accurate to say that one wandering cougar existed for a relatively short period of time in the East before getting killed. It's not accurate to extend that to others for which there is no good evidence let alone proof.

Here is your statement corrected for accuracy...

"The bottom line is that we now have proof that a big cat wandered over from the Badlands and existed in the Eastern United States outside of Florida."
 
William Parcher said:
It's like I'm talking to a brick wall.

Here it is again...



Note that you have used "big cats" which is plural and "exist" which is present tense. This is a kind of semantic trojan horse. The single wandering cougar which was killed is now serving as an example (you say proof) of others presently living in the East which have not been killed. But there is no functional evidence of any others. Just this one which got dead. This one is not proof of others.

It's accurate to say that one wandering cougar existed for a relatively short period of time in the East before getting killed. It's not accurate to extend that to others for which there is no good evidence let alone proof.

Here is your statement corrected for accuracy...

"The bottom line is that we now have proof that a big cat wandered over from the Badlands and existed in the Eastern United States outside of Florida."
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You're merely arguing semantics at this point. Yawn.
 
Bigfooter said:
That there was a cougar living in the Eastern United States.

Could you explain how that isn't accurate rather than just asking questions continually.
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Was that cougar living in every county it walked through on it's way to it's demise?

If it had walked south and died in Mexico, what sort of cougar would it have been and where would it have lived?
 
William Parcher said:
It's like I'm talking to a brick wall.

Here it is again...



Note that you have used "big cats" which is plural and "exist" which is present tense. This is a kind of semantic trojan horse. The single wandering cougar which was killed is now serving as an example (you say proof) of others presently living in the East which have not been killed. But there is no functional evidence of any others. Just this one which got dead. This one is not proof of others.

It's accurate to say that one wandering cougar existed for a relatively short period of time in the East before getting killed. It's not accurate to extend that to others for which there is no good evidence let alone proof.

Here is your statement corrected for accuracy...

"The bottom line is that we now have proof that a big cat wandered over from the Badlands and existed in the Eastern United States outside of Florida."
Click to expand...

A prior Parcher dodge from questions asked by Dinwar, I believe

{quote][Post 98]
Author : William Parcher
Date : 11th March 2011 01:37 AM

Got any specifics on the highlighted stuff?

Ooopsie. Another one who didn't read the report. :boggled:

Your arguments are a waste of time. Biological and ecology sciences seem to be your enemy.

The Eastern Cougar is gone.
The Eastern Cougar is extinct.
The Eastern Cougar is extirpated.[/quote]


They asked legit questions and all Billy can do is dismiss and dodge or cry troll. Ironically he started the thread was the whole thread a troll?

Hmm............
 
Drewbot said:
truth.
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You don't get a vote. If all cougars from the period predating man have orginated from SA, then the point is moot. YOU declared all of them in the east to be escaped pets, and now attempt to spin, you are deceitful, mr bot, if that is your real name.

You have a pesky ahbit of declaring opinions and absolutes as truth
 
mikeyx said:
YOU declared all of them in the east to be escaped pets,
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No, he didn't. He very clearly demonstrated after your challenge that he included western cougars among the possible origin of cougars documented in the eastern U.S. Your repeated assertions to the contrary - even after you were shown your error - are mind-boggling.
 
The Shrike said:
No, he didn't. He very clearly demonstrated after your challenge that he included western cougars among the possible origin of cougars documented in the eastern U.S. Your repeated assertions to the contrary - even after you were shown your error - are mind-boggling.
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No whats sad is that if SA Cougars are the great forebearers to ALL cougars in North America this entire thread is stupid, he is however a liar.
 
I'm sorry, but in the spirit of "you don't get a vote", I can only conclude from your behavior in this thread that you're unable or unwilling to engage in rational discourse.
 
The Shrike said:
I'm sorry, but in the spirit of "you don't get a vote", I can only conclude from your behavior in this thread that you're unable or unwilling to engage in rational discourse.
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I said a while back the argument has devolved into stupidity, the reason is above. Now its just twits arguing semantics while pretending they're, insinuating I'm crazy for that is also a dodge.
 
The Connecticut cougar was also confirmed in Lake George, New York by tracks, hair and DNA.

Wild cougar passed through Lake George

Cindy Eggleston spotted a cougar in her backyard in the town of Lake George the night of December 16. The next morning, her husband, David Eggleston, who is a retired DEC colonel, and Environmental Conservation Officer Louis Gerrain followed the animal's tracks through the snow and collected hair samples from what appeared to be a bedding site.

DNA analysis of the hairs indicated that they came from the same cougar that was killed by a car on a highway in Milford, Connecticut, on June 11. Previously, DNA tests of the Connecticut cougar showed that it was the same cougar that had been tracked in Minnesota and Wisconsin and that it came from a breeding population in the Black Hills of South Dakota...

DEC maintains that cougars were extirpated from the Adirondacks in the nineteenth century, though some people contend that a remnant population continues to dwell in the region. (DEC biologist Kevin) Hynes argues that the fact that the animal was observed and tracked–not only in New York but in other states–is evidence against the existence of a remnant population.

"If we had a number of mountain lions living in the Adirondacks or the Catskills, they certainly would be detected over time," he said.

Hynes added that Eggleston's may be the first sighting of a wild cougar in New York State since the late 1800s. A cougar kitten was shot and killed in Saratoga County in 1993, but tests indicated that it had been a captive animal of South American origin.
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This is the kind of confirmatory evidence that is available when real cougars are present. We have nothing like this for any other cougars in the East.
 

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