Eastern Cougar Is Declared Extinct, With an Asterisk

[madinmaryland]

Seven decades after the last reported sighting of the eastern cougar, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service declared it extinct Wednesday and recommended that it be removed from the nation’s endangered species list.

There’s one wrinkle, though: it may not be extinct, exactly.

Scientists are moving toward the conclusion that the eastern cougar was erroneously classified as a separate subspecies in the first place. As a result of a genetic study conducted in 2000, most biologists now believe there is no real difference between the western and eastern branches of the cougar family.

Either way, the “eastern” cougar as such is no longer with us. Any recent sightings in the cougar’s historic range, which stretched from eastern Ontario and Michigan eastward to Maine and southward to Georgia, Tennessee and Missouri, were actually sightings of its relatives, the Fish and Wildlife Service said.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/science/earth/03cougar.html?hpw

[JVS]

1. In before jokes about "cougar" sightings

[madinmaryland]

2. Hmmm. I suppose I could post this in the lounge and see what happens!

[happyslug]

3. Duplicate Subject from 3-2-2011, but that used Huffington Post instead of NYT

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4754591&mesg_id=4755132

[WatsonT]

4. Y'all can have some of ours

if you want.

[lapislzi]

5. Rawr.

OK, you can delete me now.

[david_vincent]

6. Nonsense

Talk to people in Maine, as I have. Lots of people have seen them, including one guy who watched a mother and her cub for 20 minutes in clear, sunny daylight.

I was told that the reason the Feds want people to believe they're extinct is that there are some hunters who would go gunning for them if they figured any were still around. So this declaration by the Feds is basically a psychological operation, designed to bluff some people (rabid hunters) into thinking they're all gone, when they're not.

Northern Maine is a big, empty place. Don't believe everything the government tells you.

[jberryhill]

7. There are periodic reports in a lot of eastern states

The problem is that these sightings are typically unconfirmed.

It is also the case that captive cougars in the illicit exotic pet trade are sometimes released or escape.

Whether any cougar or cougars are in seen outdoors is not an indication that there is necessarily a breeding population of cougars.

But, untrained people report seeing them all of the time.

[david_vincent]

8. The guy who watched the mother & cub was

a fire spotter. He watched them come out into the open around the base of his tower. OK, he wasn't a zoologist -- doesn't matter. He swears that he watched them (bear in mind, there were no trees or brush obscuring his vision) and that they were catamounts, not bobcats or anything else. And the presence of a cub is powerful evidence that breeding was taking place !!

I myself have seen a lynx (yes, a real lynx, NOT a bobcat -- the tracks it left in the snow were proof) and there's no freaking way that I'd mistake it for a mountain lion.

At some point, you just have to stop assuming that everyone is either stupid or foolish; you have to just give basic credit at some point, or else you wind up living in some kind of narcissistic world in which only YOU have any intelligence or sense. Just how much "training" is necessary before someone can be extended the credit to be able to know WTF they're looking at in broad daylight ??

[jberryhill]

10. "you just have to stop assuming that everyone is either stupid or foolish"

You seem not to understand the point.

If someone says X, then it is facile to believe the choices are:

(a) X is true
(b) X is false

There is something peculiar about people who cannot deal with indeterminacy, e.g.:

(c) X is indeterminate

That is not a judgment that anyone is stupid or foolish. What I do know about all people, unless you live on a wildly different planet than I do, is that they are all fallible. Maybe it is because I make many mistakes and errors on a daily basis - and I'm considered to be a fairly competent person - that I do not discount that possibility in others.

I don't know what that fire spotter saw. Neither do you. That is the basic fact of the situation. Only that fire spotter has access to the perceptions in his/her head, so in the absence of other supporting evidence, arguing about what someone says they saw is not only pointless, but IS stupid.

I was going to add that one of the reasons this story is of interest to me is that during a spate of alleged cougar sightings in my area, one night I saw something I thought was a dog, but moved like a cat. It was dark, and it was brief, but if you put a gun to my head, I'd say it looked very much like a cougar. However, I'm keenly aware that perceptual errors are more common that most people are willing to believe. So, I thought I saw one, but without footprints, photographs, scat, hairs, etc. that could confirm it as a cougar, I really wouldn't have a problem if you didn't believe me.

And that is not about being stupid or foolish, it is simply a question of where you set the bar between things that are confirmed or unconfirmed. Again, some folks can't handle the answer "I don't know", because they have some kind of need for certainty about everything.

[Lyric]

12. I've seen one. I can tell you exactly when and where.

It was in early August of 1994, in Pendleton County, West Virginia, in the woods near the top of a mountain called "Cave Mountain". Four of us (teenagers) took two 4-wheelers up the mountain, because we were staying there as guests at the time and we'd never seen the overlook. It's a rock outcropping on top, where you can see for miles and miles. Anyway, we already knew to watch out for bears and rattlesnakes (thus, the 4-wheelers--a much quicker means of escape, and louder, so the bears would be warned a lot earlier that we were coming through). It's about a 4-mile ride up the mountain, through the forest, to get to the top.

We spent about two hours up at the "High Knob" (the name of the overlook), playing around. We'd brought a small stack of paper up so we could make paper airplanes and sail them off the edge of the overlook, just to see how far they'd go. We turned around to head back, and while easing our way down the steep, tree-rooted path that leads down from the overlook to where we'd parked the 4-wheelers, I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. It was a cougar/mountain lion/whatever--it was laying on its belly up on top of a solitary rock outcropping, just looking at us. It didn't do anything dramatic. It just laid there, looking at us.

Honestly, it's a miracle that I even saw it. Even though the rocks were grey and white and black, I swear, it blended right in. I probably only noticed it because I was nervous about the bears in that area, and I was being hyper-vigilant about my surroundings. But there was really no mistaking it for anything else. It had those black "eyeliner" marks around its eyes, short, tawny fur that had no obvious dapples, stripes, or marks, it didn't have the "jowl" fur or the ear tufts that bobcats tend to have, and it was MUCH too big to be a bobcat. It wasn't just a quick glance that I got, either--it stayed right there the whole time we were walking to the 4-wheelers, getting ourselves loaded on (we rode double) and radioing back to the farmhouse to tell the grownups that we were on our way down. At first I didn't say anything, because I was afraid that if I pointed it out and the others panicked, we'd scare it into being aggressive or something. But when we were sitting on the 4-wheelers, I poked my friend Mike (he was driving our 4-wheeler--I was riding behind him) and pointed it out to him. I guess I just wanted *someone* other than me to see it, so I didn't think that I was going crazy. Mike's eyes got pretty big, but he didn't panic or anything. He just turned off the radio and calmly started driving us away.

Our parents called the Wildlife people when we got back down to the house we were staying at, but the lady on the phone seemed pretty skeptical. They sent a guy out to talk to us about it; HE certainly wasn't skeptical. He said that he'd heard lots of stories about people seeing them in that area, but nobody had ever found definitive proof of it, mostly because even though that area is public land, it's hard to access, and because the terrain and the forest are so rough and thick, there just aren't many people who go that far up the mountain. He told us that even if they *are* up there, though, they might just be the descendants of "pet" cougars that people had brought to that area and set free, and not an indigenous species. What shocks me is that none of the locals have ever managed to kill one. There are several guys who train their bear dogs on that mountain--how the dogs could have missed them all these years is beyond me. But they usually keep their dogs on the lower part of the mountain, where the bears like to hang out in the hollows and gullies, so maybe that's the reason.

Ah well. It would be awesome if we could officially declare that WV has wild cougars again, but I'm not holding my breath. For all I know, that one cat might have been the ONLY one, and it could be like the ranger guy said--that it's just a released pet, and not indigenous at all.

:shrug:

[CrownPrinceBandar]

14. Tucker County used to be lousy with them.........

supposedly before big logging hit and now there are only anecdotal reports of folks seeing them there.

[nalnn]

9. Anecdotally

Almost on a monthly basis, around our property, one will hear the unmistakable sounds of large cat. Every once in a while, fur can be found pulled by a low hanging tree branch or a tangle of vines/bushes.

Only ONCE in 30 years, have I actually SEEN one of these big cats.

[jberryhill]

11. Have you ever thought of taking a sample of the fur to an expert of some kind?

[nalnn]

13. Thought about it?

Sure, I've thought about it. Even mentioned it around the campus to the professors who would know something about it. Never had anyone ask for a sample though, or even my address. Perhaps next time I'll shove it in their face.