When I was a young boy reading tales of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, hardly anything seemed as exotic and fiercely wild as the occasional encounter with a catamount. Whether called pumas, cougars, panthers, or mountain lion, the USA’s second-biggest native cat was and remains special (ok on that 2d-biggest ref: not many jaguars in the US, but Arizona gets one every once in a while crossing over from Mexico. See earlier post).
Thus it is sad to see that the US Fish and Wildlife Service has officially declared the eastern cougar extinct. It says that despite the occasional sighting report, it’s probably been gone 80 years or so. Claims they have been seen still alive might be mistaken identify of other animals, they say, or were of escaped captives descended from other subspecies, or perhaps reveal infiltration of such subspecies as the western cougar from Canada or the west into the former range of eastern cougars. If so, only another subspecies, the rare Florida Panther, roams wild and in enough numbers for a reproducing population anywhere near the East Coast.
First sighting of this news was on the AP, where Michael Rubinkam has a short account.
More interesting coverage is in Maine. There, a reporter has been following cougar news closely:
- Bangor Daily News (Mar 2) Kevin Miller: Feds declare Eastern cougar officially extinct, despite continued reports of sightings;
- Bangor Daily News (Dec. 3, 2010) Kevin Miller: Despite hundreds of sightings, cougar’s status remains in doubt ;
*UPDATE 1: A few outlets moved the ball forward overnight, including an explanation for my confusion (below) on what the taxonomic name is for the Eastern Cougar. It appears that FWS may have used the wrong word for what happened to the eastern cougar: it’s not extinct, but is extirpated. The species to the west are actually, experts say, the same species. And if they move back in, the so-called extinction will have been undone.
- NYTimes – Felicity Barringer: Eastern Cougar is Declared Extinct, With an Asterisk;
- PostMedia via Montreal Gazette – Randy Boswell: U.S. officials declare eastern cougar extinct, despite sightings in Canada ; Up there, not even extirpated, a local wildlife biologist says.
- Christian Science Monitor – Chris Richardson: Eastern cougar declared extinct by US government ; Is it time to give up on “decimated” in its original meaning, which was reduced by ten percent, an appalling loss of troops should it occur in just one battle? The story also has nothing on the issue of formal classification of eastern cougar as a subspecies, distinct population, or what.
UPDATE 2:
- NYTimes (blog) Felicity Barringer: The Eastern Cougar: Dead or Alive? ; Barringers reflects on her discovery that this story, simple on its face, turned out to have a surprising, subtle twist. And she highlights some of her readers’ reactions.
Miller, among the first to file and having written on the elusive cats and on the insistence they have seen them from many residents – backed by members of the state wildlife service who believe a small breeding population remains in the state – did not need the press release on the recent finding to write a comprehensive story.
Just flying over the northeastern US and Canada’s southeastern tier, and seeing all those woodlands going on and on, is enough to get the mind thinking there must be some big cats down there, and not just lynx.
The reporting in the Bangor paper leaves one to think that a few other reporters must have taken it upon themselves to look for signs that, with so many high school mascots being the cougar, whether the real thing is still about. A few examples found by hasty search:
- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Mar 11, 2007) John Hayes: New research to determine the existence of the eastern cougar ;
- NYTimes (Feb 23, 2004) Lisa W. Foderaro: Stalking the Elusive Wild Cougar … if There Is One Left to Stalk ;
- AP (Sep 19, 2008) Virginia Town Tries to Prove Existence of ‘Ghost Cats’ ;
- USA Today ScienceFair Blog – Elizabeth Weise: Eastern cougar officially declared extinct ;
Help! I tried to find what the proper Lynnaean name is for eastern cougars. One reference said Puma concolor couguar. But other refs apply that same name to the mountain lions of the western US and Canada. (UPDATE: see comments below, and F. Barringer’s NYT story in update above).
Grist for the Mill: US Fish and Wildlife Service Press Release ;
– Charlie Petit
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