Eastern Mountain Lions May Be Extinct, but Locals Still See Them

The Wall Street Journal ^ | 28 Aug 2015 | Jennifer Levitz

[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.

[uglybiker]

Bears think hippies are delicious.

[Viking2002]

Amen to that. We have a pack of them roaming around here. When they go into hysterics, it sounds like the woods are chock-a-block with them. They took out one of my wife's cats this past spring. I told her not to leave him out overnight - same pack brought down a doe in the neighbor's yard and left nothing but the head behind as a going away present.

[Jeff Chandler]

Nobody ever has confirmed a black mountain lion in that time. None shot, trapped, snared, run over. Zero.

Yeah, well nobody's ever confirmed a big foot either but they're out there.