Posted on 08/29/2015 8:23:32 AM PDT by Theoria
Officials ponder changing cat’s status, causing roar of protest; sighting a ‘U.F.O.’
Diana Marchibroda insists she saw the beast near the Appalachian Trail in Virginia in May. From the woods sauntered a “tall, very sleek” mountain lion, she says. Ms. Marchibroda, a dentist who is 62 years old, says she and her silver-haired miniature schnauzer, Sophie, “both watched in awe.”
“My sighting is ABSOLUTE,” she wrote the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in July. “I know what I saw.”
Dozens of similar missives have poured into the agency as it proposes removing the Eastern mountain lion from the list of endangered species, where it has been since 1973. That change comes because the agency believes the creature no longer exists and would effectively render the subspecies extinct.
The roar of protest is from Easterners who contend the formidable felines still roam forests, fields and backyards from Maine to Georgia.
“There was no mistaking that long tail!” wrote one commenter to the agency in June, about an alleged sighting in New York. “Big as my bike,” promised another about a purported lion in Harrisburg, Pa.
The debate is “sort of in the realm of Bigfoot,” but with more scientific basis, says Noah Charney, an expert animal tracker in Western Massachusetts. The occasional mountain lion is spotted in the East, after wandering in from the West, but it is exceedingly uncommon and officials say people are reporting far more sightings than technically possible.
Also called cougars, pumas and panthers, mountain lions boast impressive tails, buff builds and often tawny-brown coats. They thrive in the West and have expanded eastward in recent decades, breeding in spots like South Dakota, with sightings increasing in the Midwest.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Only dangerous if you are a rabbit or rat. Pretty much a very large housecat. Beautiful animal.
I completely agree with this guy. While driving slowly on a forest service road in Idaho looking for huckleberries, I came around a corner and saw what I initially thought was a deer standing on the edge of the road. It darted across the road and up the bank and was gone. When I saw that tail there was no mistaking what I was seeing. The entire encounter lasted 2-3 seconds but it was a 100% positive ID.
About 25 years ago I was a biologist at Shenandoah National Park. I spent a lot of time in the backcountry. One day I saw a mountain lion, close enough for there to be no doubt as to what it was. I was later interviewed by the Washington Post for an article about it. I guess it was pretty unusual for a trained biologist to report one.
Having said that, I will add three points: First, the two animals that are probably most reported when they aren’t actually there are mountain lions and wolves. About half of all mountain lion reports seem to be of a “black panther”. However, there has never been a verified sighting of a black mountain lion anywhere on the North American continent, even in areas in which there are fairly plentiful. That should be a clue that most of the reported sightings of mountain lions are bogus. Most of the remaining sightings are probably of bobcats or of an active imagination (perhaps combined with a fleeting sighting of a deer in heavy brush or something similar). Even with regard to the Florida mountain lion (which last I heard only numbered around 100 animals), there is occasionally one run over or other physical evidence found.
Second, there have been instances in which people have released pet mountain lions into the wild in the East. These may account for some of the sightings. Also, the mountain lion is known to sometimes wander very widely. It is conceivable that some sightings, especially in the upper Midwest, may be individual western mountain lions that have wandered.
Third, when I worked at Shenandoah I looked through some old records of Shenandoah and nearby areas compared to a broader area of the East. It is my belief that the eastern mountain lion always had a remnant population in the eastern part of West Virginia and the western part of Virginia. I don’t believe that it ever became completely extinct. The one that I saw up close and personal was very much alive.
I might add that when I refer to the absence of reports from a trained biologists and to the prevalence of bogus “black panther” sightings, I am referring to eastern mountain lions.
"I was just testing the lab...". Yeah, right.
An environut wanting ESA BS to apply...for misery and enhanced budget.
The local moonshiners story is that one got shot by some of the locals, DNR pulled in and said you got something in that shed that belongs to us, we’ve got a tag in it’s ear, give it to us and we won’t press charges AND YOU NEVER SAW IT.
Phone pictures says otherwise.....
Just sayin’..... you know how those moonshiner stories go....
What color are Jaguars ? The animal I saw was the light brown color of a mountain lion.
Most people can tell the difference between a cougar and a deer. I could care less that you are a biologist. For what it is worth, I have seen a cougar once out west. Difficult to mistake it for something else. Seen Bobcats too. No way you could mistake one for a cougar.
My understanding is that the Florida Panther has been removed from all endangered/threatened lists worldwide since DNA testing determined it to be identical to the western mountain lion/puma/cougar.
My assumption is that the Eastern Mountain Lion is also identical to the western mountain lion/puma/cougar. Rather than admitting that the Eastern Mountain Lion never existed as a separate distinct species, the neo-pagans declare it extinct.
There is a difference between, for example, a frequent outdoorsman seeing something in an open field, and a city person seeing something in the shade in dense woods. People misreport things all the time.
Mountain lion found in Kentucky apparently from South Dakota
'FRANKFORT, Ky. —Kentucky Fish and Wildlife officials say they have investigated and can't say for sure how a mountain lion turned up on a central Kentucky farm last December.
A conservation officer responded to a complaint on Dec. 15 in Bourbon County and found the animal treed by a homeowner's dog in a populated area outside of Paris. The officer shot and killed the animal due to public safety concerns.
The lion was determined to be a 5-year-old male, weighing 125 pounds and in good condition. DNA analyses link the lion's genetic origin to a population in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
The agency says there's no evidence the mountain lion made its way to Kentucky on its own and is believed to have been a released or escaped captive lion.'
Of course there is a difference. At the same time, you cannot inject that overarching bias against every sighting in the east. There are a lot of people that are just as familiar with wildlife as “trained field biologist”. I grew up with a community of such people. If they saw comething, you could be assured it wasn’t a feral dog, coyote, or wolf. I suspect there are similar people on the east coast.
I never said anything “against every sighting in the east”. But I do know that things are often misidentified. Sober deer hunters have even been known to shoot horses in the woods. With regard to eastern mountain lions, as stated previously perhaps half of all such reports have been of “black panthers”. Mountain lions are hunted in the West. Out of the many, many that have been killed, are you aware how many have been black? (Hint: The possible answers are “about half” and “zero”.)
And if you read closely, you will have noted that I am one of those who do not believe that the eastern mountain lion ever became extinct. Calm down.
Even more rare would be black mountain lions, as those are considered non-existent.
I hate to tell you that there are Black Panthers all over the South. They are spotted in every outlying suburb of Atlanta and all the southern states. They are not Jaguars. They are a mutated coloration cougar/mountain lion/panther.
Exactly! I know our county game warden and he will tell you they don’t exist in KY. And he doesn’t want them to exist because as you say lots of new laws, policies and procedures go into effect if they do.
I live near a national park and have a huge mt. lion that me, my wife and her mom have seen several times. We have found paw prints in the snow and mud and told the warden and park rangers, but alas they don’t exist, we saw bobcats. Right, a tall bobcat big as a hugest breed of dog with the head of a mountain lion, no little tuft ears and no stump tail but a huge long brown tail.
Unofficially I have had park personal tell me, yeah they are here and we know it, the state knows it, but everyone just decides to live in fantasy land.
In addition the Black Panthers make a noise that mimics a human’s scream or a child crying. That’s what I heard that night outside our house. The two Black Panthers were crying and it sounded like a child crying out. It was right after that that my husband looked out the window and saw them in the middle of the street. We have a streetlight in front of our house. They were illuminated and they were Black. About the size of Bobcats with long tails.
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>> “I saw one cross the dirt road in northern Mexico.” <<
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That would be the jaguar or western puma (they are similar, may actually be the same species)
In California, the puma can vary from tan to almost black with some being faintly spotted like the Jag.
"Panther" is a non-scientific term given to any number of species. If you mean black pumas/mountain lions, I would think in the era of cell phones we would have some documentation of that phenomenon.
The jaguar is related to lions and tigers; the puma is related to house cats.
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