At the time, the Florida panther was officially, adamantly extinct. The few sightings that were reported were dismissed as hoaxes or misidentifications. Within a couple of decades though, the Florida panther was officially declared to have survived.
I believe Sasquatch is real based on reported sightings and videos, footprints with dermal ridges and bone structure, and DNA analysis of hair and scat that come back as "unknown primate." Yet Sasquatch also seems to be something more than a simple flesh and blood creature.
The federal government may know that Sasquatch is real but suppresses their knowledge and discussion of the subject due to the potential to impinge on federal land use.
I still live in hope that the Ivory Billed Woodpecker is just hiding out...
“Yet Sasquatch also seems to be something more than a simple flesh and blood creature.”
According to the official military officer assigned to investigate it, we have some kind of technologically sophisticated “other” on the planet, which is between 50,000 to a million years beyond us, they appear to pop into and out of another dimension we cannot access, and their ships appear to actually warp space and time in a bubble around them, as they make 8,000mph right angle turns.
If they wanted to tour our woodlands, like a park, I would not be surprised they would don a technology-fueled costume to try to look like a scary, massive biped, which belonged in the woods. That is how I would do it. Bears would leave me alone, if people saw me nobody would believe them, and I would have all the physical joy of trekking on foot through the woods.
I would be more surprised if they found they were some flesh and blood hominid which had a breeding population in the woods.