Posted on 03/02/2011 6:40:18 PM PST by americanophile
ALLENTOWN, Pa. – The "ghost cat" is just that.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday declared the eastern cougar to be extinct, confirming a widely held belief among wildlife biologists that native populations of the big cat were wiped out by man a century ago.
After a lengthy review, federal officials concluded there are no breeding populations of cougars — also known as pumas, panthers, mountain lions and catamounts — in the eastern United States. Researchers believe the eastern cougar subspecies has probably been extinct since the 1930s.
Wednesday's declaration paves the way for the eastern cougar to be removed from the endangered species list, where it was placed in 1973. The agency's decision to declare the eastern cougar extinct does not affect the status of the Florida panther, another endangered wildcat.
Some hunters and outdoors enthusiasts have long insisted there's a small breeding population of eastern cougars, saying the secretive cats have simply eluded detection — hence the "ghost cat" moniker. 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."
A breeding population of eastern cougars would almost certainly have left evidence of its existence, he said. Cats would have been hit by cars or caught in traps, left tracks in the snow or turned up on any of the hundreds of thousands of trail cameras that dot Eastern forests.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Does that reduce the value?
Ted Turner would say so. Prince Philip of England would say so.
It’s only european people who are having the feminine anti-self pro-others ideas that you express in post #1. Asian people do not feel like that. African people do not feel like that. Arab people do not feel like that.
Ah yes...the 1969 XR-7...my first car. Red with a black vinyl top. Loved that 351 Windsor. Great car. Wish I still had it.
Nice headlights on that cougar.
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.
My home town. Got an address for Lisa?
If all the small dogs were gone how would I know where to buy tacos?
We saw a cougar in our yard, and recorded it’s call. It scared the bejeebers out of me, and I have never been scared here in 25 years! Called the TWRA to tell them, and they blew us off. “There aren’t cougars in Tennessee.”
I've heard the same stories from my uncles from NW North Carolina.
In fact on uncle was scared to death of them. It seems a panther hunted him once when he was a kid.
“I thought there were still florida panthers left.”
You’re right, there are still “plenty” of panthers left in Florida.
Rembrandt
Sarasota, FL
I don’t believe they wiped out the large predators because of danger. I think they did it for prestige. The ancient greeks would go way out of their way to FIND a lion to kill. Before firearms, killing such an animal was something to be admired. It was a feat of skill and intelligence as much as physical strength. I don’t know much about lions in asia minor. But I do know they have wolves there to this day. Wolves are the reason for existence of the anatolian shepherd dog.
I live in Washington state, on the Kitsap Peninsula in particular. There have been no Roosevelt Elk on this peninsula for well over a century, some people say never in mans memory. In the South, the Tacoma Narrows sits nearly a mile across, with 100 foot drop offs on each side. To the SW, there is a route to the Olympics where Elk do reside, but it is 30 miles away, and the land between here and there is lived in, with roads, fences and just generally populated with 100’s of thousands of homes and people. With that said, somebody hit an Elk on the highway, it was so fully developed in size that it survived, only losing one side of its antlers, while destroying the car. There have been no reports of Elk in this area, nobody can figure out how it came to be there, but there it was crossing a 4 lane freeway, where deer are commonly seen, along with bears and an occasional Cougar or Wildcat, but not an Elk. How can they say the entire Eastern Cougar population is extinct?
Cougars? We've got more FAR than we want here in the populated west. They kill deer, antelope, domestic cattle AND pets, dogs, cats - and horses. As these killers multiplied in huge numbers - and ran out of game, they began attacking people in small towns near the mountains, then the suburbs of Los Angeles and multiple other cities along the Sierra Mountain range.
In the coastal mountains, we used to have quite a good deer herd - not anymore! There are very few now - and hence the excessive number of cougar (for some time now dying from starvation) has finally became a better more-manageable smaller number.
I used to see cougar almost every night 5 or 6 years ago, now I see one rarely - and I've began to see a few (very) deer lately.
As a hunter, I look at it this way - the cougar is a needless competitor with man for game supply - and we can maintain a healthy game supply without that needless competition.
However, Cougar will always be with us, as the population patterns of man pretty much guarantees that they will be - so long as man refuses to live in great numbers far into the vast mountain ranges of the west.
There is no such thing as an "eastern" cougar.
Young cougars migrate hundreds and even thousands of miles looking for a territory. All the populations have the same DNA.
From what I have heard, Cougars can jump straight up 25 feet from a sitting position.
What I don’t understand is the group mentality.
I look at EACH person, not a group.
Some of them are in Alabama, as well.
That's because the Florida panther is actually a North American cougar. It's no longer considered a separate species or subspecies by those who adhere to the truth (those outside of government and not environmental quacks).
The alligator is no longer threatened either, yet it is still protected by law. What can I say, except the government is exempt from racketeering laws.
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.
What the hell? Does the author know what he's talking about? What is a "trail camera"? What is it watching for? Who monitors it? How did these get installed? To whom and how do they transmit images?
This is really weird. OT, I know, but this really caught my attention.
All you eastern trail hikers -- is this true? Do you see a camera every half mile on your hikes? Do you wave or flip them the finger?
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