Posted on 02/07/2008 9:29:48 AM PST by Renfield
Whether it was wild or a captive mountain lion remains to be seen.
The Department of Natural Resources confirmed Tuesday that DNA tests concluded that a large cat seen leaping from a hayloft on Jan. 18 in Rock County was a cougar.
If it is determined to be wild, it would be the first evidence that cougars had returned to Wisconsin since the early 1900s.
Additional testing from a U.S. Forest Service laboratory in Missoula, Mont., will determine the sex of the cat and the subspecies.
If testing shows that the cougar was from South America, for example, it would show that a captive cat had escaped. So far Doug Fendry, a biologist with the DNR, said that the agency has received no reports in Wisconsin or from northern Illinois of escaped cougars.
A veteran hunter and trapper from the Town of Milton saw the cougar and called the DNR.
The DNA sample came from blood while Fendry and another DNR employee tracked footprints in the snow.
Fendry said he has received about 40 calls and e-mails from people in Rock County claiming they have seen a cougar or saw one in the past.
LOL! Wiping coffee off my screen.
Wait a minute!
Wait a minute!
There is somebody from Washington State University
there?
Is this somehow a big deal?
*Sigh* Why didn’t any of my high school friends have mothers that looked and acted like Stiffler’s mom?
Seems the fish & wildlife fanatics would be taking the opposite attitude - are they actually happier that the animals are extinct in their area, or alive in their area?
Omar Bin Laden, 26, who admits attending terror training with the Al Qaeda leader in Afghanistan, has been interviewed with his wife Jane Felix-Browne, 52, by British Embassy officials in Cairo, where he is currently living.
Do you mean we cant trust the government?
Where did the blood come from?
That guy looks like he should be a roadie for the band KISS.
The folks around here (Western North Dakota) politely listened to the proponents of the Buffalo Commons concept and then politiely asked them to go back to New Jersey where they came from.
That does not stop the desire to implement this crap, not the actual implementation thereof, it just means they have to be sneakier.
Heck, my housecat regularly attacks me, and she weighs 7 lbs; the cougar I saw looked about 110.
I would be happy to take care of that problem for you (I've gotten pretty good at that here in Maryland). Are you the affected landowner?
Pffft. I saw a cougar at the bar the other night...
See post 30. This may seem like tinfoil hat stuff, but the UN has been behind global land management for decades, and their fellow travelers, environmentalists, and others have a vision of generally depopulating the rural heartland of America, or at least herding all the people into 'urban islands' with narrow transport corridors.
Of course, no one has mentioned where the food is going to come from when all that farmland and pasture goes to seed...
Another Buffalo Commons article which was written when the economy here took a severe and abrubt downturn in '99--oil was so low ($4.50/bbl for sour, $6.50/bbl for sweet) that for the first time in over 40 years there was no rig drilling for oil, farm prices were in the crapper, and in general two legs of the state's economy were in bad shape. Usually oil or agriculture does well, and rarely both, but seldom both are hurting as they were when the person who wrote the article saw the little towns which depend on both for sustenance.
Of course, the pendulum has gone in the other direction, now. Housing prices have trippled in many towns, and both agriculture and oil industries and related services are riding the wave.
It is always possible to see the bust cycles as one looks back, the old homesteads or farmhouses from past booms left to sit, even the areasclaimed as "wilderness" which are go-back land, homesteads ceded back to the government in the '30s during that bust.
The next time things go south, economically, the opportunists will be there with an imported cure-all, and some folks will leave. The rest will carefully shepherd their resources, continue through the tough times, and be here when conditions improve once more.
Since the first settlers came west, and even before, it has been this way.
They have taken a hankering for the feral piglets.
No, I’m not a land owner over and above the automobiles that my wife and I drive. Thankfully the MX-5 and the Mini Cooper S are quick on their tires. Hardly a day goes by without several accidents involving deer. If I owned the land I have 12 Ga. that would do the talking. I have had, when my father owned a farm, no problem with sending Bambi to the happy grazing ground.
There has been some around Rice Lake for at least 20 years and Im aware of at least 1 outside of Pembine. Googling around finds alot of reports, some rather reliable, that they are all over the North half of the state.
“See post 30. This may seem like tinfoil hat stuff, but the UN has been behind global land management for decades, and their fellow travelers, environmentalists, and others have a vision of generally depopulating the rural heartland of America, or at least herding all the people into ‘urban islands’ with narrow transport corridors.”
Would that be Agenda 21?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.