[Eepsy]

The wildlife service said Wednesday it confirmed 108 sightings between 1900 and 2010, but that these animals either escaped or were released from captivity, or migrated from western states to the Midwest. "The Fish and Wildlife Service fully believes that some people have seen cougars, and that was an important part of the review that we did," said Mark McCollough, an endangered species biologist who led the agency's eastern cougar study. "We went on to evaluate where these animals would be coming from."

Does this basically say that the only difference between an Eastern Cougar and any other kind of cougar is strictly one of location? What the heck kind of definition of "extinct" does the Fish and Wildlife Service have in their dictionary?

[freeandfreezing]

"The Fish and Wildlife Service fully believes that some people have seen cougars, and that was an important part of the review that we did," said Mark McCollough, an endangered species biologist who led the agency's eastern cougar study. "We went on to evaluate where these animals would be coming from."

Apparently their theory is that they all were born in the "West" and walked to the "East". So they are "Western" cougars. But that doesn't make much sense at all, particularly when you know someone (a logger who spends most of the year in the woods) who has seen a mother cougar carrying her kittens across a woods road in New Hampshire.

But maybe the mother cougar went to Vegas for the weekend and met up with the father of her kittens there. So the kittens are "Western" cougars that were born in New Hampshire. To me that makes them natural born citizens of the eastern part of our country anyway.

[exDemMom]

Does this basically say that the only difference between an Eastern Cougar and any other kind of cougar is strictly one of location? What the heck kind of definition of "extinct" does the Fish and Wildlife Service have in their dictionary?

I think that they are refering to a subspecies. The east and west cougars would differ much like northern and southern Europeans, but in the same way, are still the same species.