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.