news that the eastern cougar has gone extinct is capturing headlines today. That’s a bit misleading, as the subspecies was actually officially declared extinct in 2011, and it’s probably been totally absent from the East Coast for at least 80 years.

Most stories also fail to mention that cougars are actually returning to the east.

Eastern cougars, preying mostly on white-tailed deer in forests and coastal marshes, were declared endangered in 1973, even though no sightings had been documented for three decades. The last of their kind on record was killed by a hunter in Maine in 1938. 

Sightings since then turned out to be wayward visitors from the West. For example, a lone male mountain lion was killed on a Connecticut highway in 2011 after traveling thousands of miles (kilometers) from South Dakota through Minnesota, Wisconsin and New York, the Fish and Wildlife Service said.

Can a large predator like a cougar successfully live in the small pockets of forest remaining in the crowded northeast? Wes Siler blogger from California says —–He lives in a city park, where he hunts deer. Other cougars live in the nearby Santa Monica Mountains, San Gabriel Mountains, and even the Verdugos, right in the middle of one of the largest urban areas on the continent.

Should people be scared of cougars returning to the northeast? One study suggests that they’ll actually save lives. By managing the overgrown deer population in the region, researchers believe that cougars could reduce the number of road accidents caused by the hoofed animals. Over the course of the next 30 years, that could add up to 155 human lives saved, as well as 21,400 fewer injuries, saving $2.3 billion. Similar to the way wolves have helped restore balance in Yellowstone National Park, cougars could help protect biodiversity in the northeast.

Removing the eastern cougar from the list of Endangered Species is an important step toward welcoming the species back to the northeast. Other subspecies of cougar would not benefit from the eastern cougar’s protections, and this clears the board for a discussion about what cougar protections could look like in the region in the future. Some have even begun advocating for a purposeful reintroduction of the species.

please report your mountain lion info to Nocked up mountain lion sightings

Author: mkmcst

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