Mountain lion shot near Big Bear school
Mountain lion shot near Big Bear school
RICHARD BROOKS
7 May 2010
The Press-Enterprise
© 2010 The Press-Enterprise. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All Rights Reserved.
Deputies shot a mountain lion Thursday near a school beside Big Bear Lake just days after the same cat killed a dog in the area and another lion treed a Lake Arrowhead jogger, officials say.
“If you live in mountain or foothill communities in Southern California, there’s a possibility of a mountain lion showing up at any time,” warns California Department of Fish & Game biologist Kevin Brennan. “Usually, they’ll go after a pet or livestock before they’ll go after a person.”
A motorist summoned a deputy sheriff early Thursday after spotting a mountain lion crossing North Shore Drive in a residential area and near a school along the east end of Big Bear Lake.
The sighting was only about a mile from where a mountain lion killed a pet dog Friday along Panamint Mountain Drive, said Brennan.
Deputies killed the animal at 9:35 a.m.
Authorities said the critter was an obviously underweight female weighing about 70 pounds.
“Our on-scene biologist is of the opinion that it’s definitely the same lion that killed the dog on Friday,” said Brennan, who told of two other sightings since then. “Last night, the county trapper was out there with the hounds, but he was unable to find the lion. It obviously has been frequenting the area since it killed the dog.”
About 30 miles to the east, what is believed to be a different mountain lion chased and tried to attack a female jogger Tuesday near the Willow Creek Treatment Plant in the forest along the north shore of Lake Arrowhead.
“There was a standoff. She backed away and sought refuge in a tree,” said Brennan, who could only guess why the animal didn’t climb the tree after her. “Maybe because she was shaking a stick at it and squirting water at it.”
Workers from the water treatment plant heard her screams and drove to help her, scaring away the animal.
A federal hunter and his hounds were assigned to kill the animal, but the dogs couldn’t find the scene. And the big cat didn’t return to the area, though authorities set out animal carcasses as lures, Brennan said.
As a result, officials have called off the hunt.
“We don’t have any indication that there’s a mountain lion still in the area,” Brennan said. “It can no longer be considered an imminent threat to public safety.”
Anyone confronted by a mountain lion or bear should resist the urge to run and, instead, try to appear exceptionally large and intimidating by raising their arms over their head or spreading open their jacket or shirt, Brennan said.
“If you are attacked by a wild animal, fight back,” he said. “People have successfully repelled mountain lions with whatever they had at hand: baseball caps, cups, jackets.”
The motorist who spotted the ill-fated lion near Big Bear Lake says such sightings are becoming increasingly common.
“They (seldom) come into the populated areas,” said Ray Bowling, of 31-year resident of Big Bear City and a north shore business owner. “But in the last couple of years, I’ve started to see them.”
He believes deputies had to open fire on the Big Bear Lake mountain lion because it was in a residential area near an elementary school and had repeatedly returned to the neighborhood after killing the dog.
“The deputies were pretty brave to run down in front of this animal and keep it from escaping,” Bowling said. “They put themselves in harms way.”
Reach Richard Brooks at 951-368-9463 or rbrooks@PE.com
State officials confirm mountain lion in S. Ind.
State officials confirm mountain lion in S. Ind.
7 May 2010
Associated Press Newswires
(c) 2010. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
BLOOMFIELD, Ind. (AP) – The Department of Natural Resources has confirmed the presence of a mountain lion in southern Indiana.
DNR official Gary Langell says it’s impossible at this point to tell whether the animal sighted in rural Greene County is wild or a formerly captive cat.
A DNR biologist investigating a reported sighting of the cougar used motion-sensitive trail cameras to photograph it last weekend.
The confirmation is the first since the DNR implemented a new policy March 1 to evaluate reported sightings of the animal. Another mountain lion was confirmed in late 2009 in Clay County.
The DNR says the last documented case of a wild mountain lion in Indiana is believed to have been recorded between 1850 and 1865.
Family tries to identify cat-like creature
Family tries to identify cat-like creature
By MATT MANNING
10 May 2010
The News-Messenger, Fremont
(c) Copyright 2010, The News-Messenger, Fremont. All Rights Reserved.
GIBSONBURG — The Rogers family just finished eating their Sunday dinner when their 10-year-old son went to the window to look outside and spotted something he’s never seen in his backyard.
The child alerted his parents, Brenda and David Rogers, who also took a peek at the creature roaming around their backyard.
Using binoculars that were usually used for deer observation, they examined the animal from about 200 feet away, trying to identify what it was.
They determined it was a mountain lion.
“You just can’t wrap your head around something like that,” Brenda Rogers said.
Brenda said it was not a fox and had to be a large cat of somesort.
“Just the way it was walking, it was definitely a cat,” she said.
The cat-like animal got as close as 150 to 200 feet from the residence.
They called the Sandusky County Sheriff’s Office and then brought in their two dogs for the night. They also snapped a few pictures with their camera.
According to Sandusky County sheriff reports, the animal resembling a mountain lion was seen around 8:30 p.m. cutting in and out of the tree line of the Rogers property.
The report said the animal is described as tan or brown with a white patch on its tail. The animal was patrolling a field south of the property about 300 feet from the residence.
However, there was one other sighting by a neighbor Monday, David Rogers said, adding they concluded with the same thing — a mountain lion.
“It wasn’t a coyote,” he said. “It sure looked like it.”
The lack of sightings is leading Brenda to believe it is hiding in the woods. There also are no reports of an exotic animal missing.
Pictures were taken and sent to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to be identified.
Wildlife Officer Brian Bury visited the area Monday to find the animal’s tracks, but was unsuccessful.
“I can’t say for sure what the thing is,” Bury said. “There’s no evidence to tell what it was.”
Based on the photographs taken, Bury said he could not determine the size of the animal. He said if this happens again, using video instead of photographs can help officers with identification.
“We have reports of this stuff,” Bury said. “But very rarely is something confirmed.”
Recently the only confirmed sighting of an exotic animal was a wolf in Bellevue that was shot and killed. It turned out to be someone’s pet.
Bury said he hasn’t ruled out that it could have easily been a fat house cat, adding house cats can get up to 20 pounds.
The Division of Wildlife has not received any other sighting reports.
E-mail Matt Manning at mmanning@gannett.com.
Gibsonburg family spots possible mountain lion
Gibsonburg family spots possible mountain lion
By MATT MANNING
11 May 2010
The News-Messenger, Fremont
(c) Copyright 2010, The News-Messenger, Fremont. All Rights Reserved.
GIBSONBURG — The Rogers family just finished eating their Sunday dinner when their 10-year-old son went to the window to look outside and spotted something he’s never seen in his backyard.
The child alerted his parents, Brenda and David Rogers, who also took a peek at the creature roaming around their backyard.
Using binoculars that were usually used for deer observation, they examined the animal from about 200 feet away, trying to identify what it was.
They determined it was a mountain lion.
“You just can’t wrap your head around something like that,” Brenda Rogers said.
Brenda said it was not a fox and had to be a large cat of some sort.
“Just the way it was walking, it was definitely a cat,” she said.
The cat-like animal got as close as 150 to 200 feet from the residence.
They called the Sandusky County Sheriff’s Office and then brought in their two dogs for the night. They also snapped a few pictures with their camera.
According to Sandusky County sheriff reports, the animal resembling a mountain lion was seen around 8:30 p.m. cutting in and out of the tree line of the Rogers property.
The report said the animal is described as tan or brown with a white patch on its tail. The animal was patrolling a field south of the property about 300 feet from the residence.
However, there was one other sighting by a neighbor Monday, David Rogers said, adding they concluded with the same thing — a mountain lion.
“It wasn’t a coyote,” he said. “It sure looked like it.”
The lack of sightings is leading Brenda to believe it is hiding in the woods. There also are no reports of an exotic animal missing.
Pictures were taken and sent to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to be identified.
Wildlife Officer Brian Bury visited the area Monday to find the animal’s tracks, but was unsuccessful.
“I can’t say for sure what the thing is,” Bury said. “There’s no evidence to tell what it was.”
Based on the photographs taken, Bury said he could not determine the size of the animal. He said if this happens again, using video instead of photographs can help officers with identification.
“We have reports of this stuff,” Bury said. “But very rarely is something confirmed.”
Recently the only confirmed sighting of an exotic animal was a wolf in Bellevue that was shot and killed. It turned out to be someone’s pet.
Bury said he hasn’t ruled out that it could have easily been a fat house cat, adding house cats can get up to 20 pounds.
The Division of Wildlife has not received any other sighting reports.
Cougar suspected of attack on horse near Sidney, Iowa ;
Cougar suspected of attack on horse near Sidney, Iowa ;
DNR officials are examining the mare after a possible mountain lion sighting
Tess Gruber Nelson
WORLD-HERALD NEWS SERVICE
11 May 2010
Omaha World-Herald
Iowa
© 2010 Omaha World-Herald. Provided by ProQuest Information and
SIDNEY, Iowa — Iowa Department of Natural Resources officials are investigating reports that a cougar attacked a 2-year-old quarter horse mare west of Sidney recently.
The horse, owned by Jim and Donna Glenn of rural Sidney, was found with scrapes and cuts.
Jim Glenn said he has eight horses in a pasture he rents from Lynn Benson about a couple miles west of Sidney High School.
“Lynn came by Saturday morning and said he saw a cougar,” Glenn said. “He suggested I check on my horses.”
Glenn found the mare limping badly in a cornfield about 100 feet from the pasture.
Benson said he was heading from his pasture to his house early Saturday when he saw what appeared to be a cougar.
“It was close to 100 yards away, but I had a good view of it,” Benson said. “The size, the way he was running, the color — I don’t think it was anything else.”
Benson contacted his neighbors who have livestock.
Glenn initially thought the horse had been spooked through a fence and had cut itself. Later, he said, he and his wife found claw marks.
“I thought they were fence marks, but Donna noticed scrapes,” Glenn said. “There were claw marks all the way down her left shoulder and a wound to her left shoulder. The claw marks went across her whole body diagonally.”
Marlow Wilson, with the Department of Natural Resources, took photos of the horse and looked for evidence of a cougar.
Wilson said he’s not convinced it was a cougar and said the horse could have been injured running through a fence.
“I can be talked into either way, to be honest with you,” Wilson said. “It seems the scratches are a little close together for barbed wire and they’re pretty high on the horse’s body, but there’s also a wound on the front leg that looks like a fence post or something tore it up.”
Wilson said the scratches are roughly an inch apart and lead down one side of the body. There are four or five scratches leading into the skin tear on the shoulder of the horse.
The scratches go down the entire side of the horse, Wilson said. He said if the horse had gone through a fence, she would have had more scratches across her chest.
“The front of the animal is where I would expect to see the most (scratches) from the barbed wire,” Wilson said.
Last week, veterinarian Eric Laumann checked on the horse.
“I’ve been on about five of these that were suspected (cougar attacks) and I’d say this is the only one that has any merit,” Laumann said. “The scratches were all along the left side of the horse, and they’re about an inch apart.”
Laumann said the scratches would be about four inches apart if they were from barbed wire.
“There’s definitely a chance of it being from a mountain lion,” Laumann said. “The marks start at the front left shoulder, there’s a fairly good piece of skin missing there, and then the scratches continue all the way down the side, back to the rump.”
“The wound over the shoulder is a fairly decent skin wound, but the horse should make a full recovery,” Laumann said.
State wildlife biologist Carl Priebe isn’t sure it was a cougar.
“Photos were sent in to get a more expert opinion.” Priebe said.
There have been several unconfirmed reports of cougars in the area, the biologist said, including another sighting near Sidney a couple of weeks ago.
“What we’ve learned is that these moving cougars are young males, which average about 60 miles a week and never really stop,” Priebe said. “Two sightings, two weeks apart is a little bit different than what we know to be occurring with most of those animals. It’s different from what research has shown.”
Eager for reports
Eager for reports
12 May 2010
Free Press Leader
Copyright 2010 News Ltd. All Rights Reserved
THE Australian Rare Fauna Research Association, of which I am secretary, has been researching evidence of both big cats and Tasmanian Tigers since 1984. We have accumulated a sizeable database of sightings and are now looking in particular for evidence of predated animals.
We are eager to receive further reports, which can be sent to our website at arfra.org
Dorothy Williams.
They’re pumasYOU need to come out to the northwest in Sydney; we see it and we hear it!
Worst case was Mark Walker, who was attacked in my street in Kenthurst.
Or the Glenorie lady who was watching TV when one jumped up to the window and was sniffing the flyscreen!
My experience was a sighting around midnight in our horse paddock.
Police helped me with info as they get these reports all the time. The Government is hiding files on it, didn’t you know? It doesn’t want to spend big money trying to eliminate such an elusive animal as it would be impossible. They are black leopards or pumas, to be exact.
Posted online by Samantha.
Find on the forumALL kinds of things may be running around out there in the bush! Several species of exotic cats, and at least two large native marsupial carnivores, are yet to be described by science.
Other like-minded investigators and eyewitnesses can be found on the forum at http://www.thylacoleo.com/
Posted online by David Pratt.
Totally inappropriateTHE arboretum in Olinda is not the place for a totally inappropriate commercial project like the proposed adventure park.
The arboretum is already very popular for tourists, bushwalkers and picnickers and those who wish to escape the noise and bustle of the city and suburbs. It’s natural beauty that sells itself. In that sense it contributes to the commercial life of the hills. Well done to those who fought this proposal.
Posted online by Robert McHugh.
The reason I comeI WRITE regarding the scrapping of the Olinda adventure park plan.
As a user of the Dandenong Ranges area, I find it rather annoying that a Yarra Ranges councillor has no idea what his people want.
The reason people like myself travel to the area is to see and receive something we do not get in the suburbs.
People who live in the ranges do so because of the trees and nature that surrounds them.
How much more “community consultation” is needed?
Posted online by Athena.
How humbling: card for meAFTER a lifetime supporting the progressive, caring side of politics, I have suddenly discovered that the conservatives do actually care.
I received a birthday card from my esteemed local member for La Trobe.
To think that he has put my birth date in his diary to send me a card is quite humbling.
Aren’t computers amazing.
That taxpayers’ money is being wasted in this way and that his staff have so little to do with their time is appalling.
By contrast, the Labor candidate for La Trobe, Laura Smyth, is a lawyer who has spent much of her private time on pro bono (free) work to assist community groups, refugees and the like.
Bring on the next federal election.
Geoff Champion, Mt Dandenong.
No chance to nurtureON Mother’s Day, spare a thought for the millions of mothers who will never ever know a happy Mother’s Day.
These are the farmed animal mothers, so callously regarded by the livestock industry as nothing more than breeding machines.
These mothers are forced to produce babies continually yet are never permitted to nurture them which causes them the most anguish.
Refusing to support these ruthless industries with our consumer dollars and adopting a humane, healthy plant-based diet is the best way we can achieve this.
Jenny Moxham, Monbulk.
Consultation in the processI AM responding to the proposal to expand the use of the R. J. Hamer Arboretum (Free Press Leader, April 7).
Your article reported that a local group said the proposed development was totally unsuitable for the arboretum but did not tell us why its members believe that.
You also reported that Parks Victoria said the development was at the proposal stage and would not go ahead without extensive community consultation.
Why then was La Trobe federal Liberal MP Jason Woods attempting to dismiss Parks Victoria’s established process by suggesting there had been no community consultation?
The proposal for the R. J. Hamer Arboretum sounded like a real opportunity to create much-needed local eco-tourism jobs.
Marg Willis, Upwey.
Editor’s note:
Friends of R. J. Hamer Aboretum spokesman Julian Rose said the group was opposed to any commercial redevelopment of the area.
La Trobe federal Liberal MP Jason Wood said he was concerned about the development because of the site’s significant history.
WOMAN REPORTS SEEING A COUGAR; SIGHTING ON STATE ROUTE 303 EAST OF PENINSULA LEAVES OHIO WILDLIFE OFFICIAL WITH SOME DOUBTS
WOMAN REPORTS SEEING A COUGAR; SIGHTING ON STATE ROUTE 303 EAST OF PENINSULA LEAVES OHIO WILDLIFE OFFICIAL WITH SOME DOUBTS
Bob Downing, Beacon Journal staff writer
12 May 2010
Akron Beacon Journal (OH)
Copyright 2010, NewsBank. All Rights Reserved.
An Akron motorist claims that she saw a large cat cross a highway in northern Summit County over the weekend.”It looked like something that belonged in the zoo or in a circus,” said 62-year-old Nan Bartlett. ”It was huge. That’s what got my attention. . . . It was not something I expected to see in the Cuyahoga Valley.”She was traveling east on state Route 303 east of Peninsula and about a quarter-mile west of the Happy Days Lodge in Boston Heights when the gray-colored cat bounded across the highway about 4:45 p.m. Saturday.The cat was four to five cars lengths away and moved quickly across the road in just two leaps, said Bartlett, who said she was traveling about 40 miles per hour.The cat’s most distinctive feature was a long tail that was nearly as long as its body, Bartlett said.She described the cat as being 2 to 3 feet high with a thick, muscular body. It was significantly bigger than a German shepherd and weighed more than such a dog, she said.At first, Bartlett said she was unsure what she had seen. She went home, got on her computer and started an Internet search. Her conclusion: a mountain lion, also known as a cougar. It is a large, reclusive, nocturnal predator.
She reported her sighting to officials in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.Proving that such a cat is in fact roaming the Akron area is ”just so tough,” said Lisa Petit, chief of resource management for the national park.Park officials had not yet spoken to Bartlett and might check the area to see if there is any additional evidence, she said.
The Cuyahoga Valley park has gotten three similar reports of a large cat in the Cuyahoga Valley area over the last four years, including two from along state Route 303 in Peninsula and Boston Heights, she said.
There were also reports of mountain lions in August 2008 in the Sharon Township-Copley Township area and two months later in Richfield Township.
There are no mountain lions in this part of the United States, said Damon Greer of the Ohio Division of Wildlife.
People who claim to see a mountain lion don’t know what they are really seeing, he said.
If such a cat was really spotted, it is highly likely that it is an escaped pet or an animal that escaped from captivity, he said.
Bartlett, however, remains convinced that she saw a mountain lion.
”It was pretty cool,” she said.
Bob Downing can be reached at 330-996-3745 or bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com.
Puma sighted on road
Puma sighted on road
8 February 2010
Lilydale & Yarra Valley Leader
Copyright 2010 News Ltd. All Rights Reserved
REGARDING the article “Big cat rumours reignited in the Yarra Ranges” (Leader, January 19)
I saw the back half of a big black puma on the lower part of the Mt Donna Buang Rd at Warburton about two years ago during the snow season.
It was jet black, very large, and slender with a long straight tail, so long that it curved back up from the ground. Considering the tail, and back legs, it was definitely a big cat and not a dog that I saw. At first I wondered if it was some kind of domestic big cat from a circus, until I did research and found that there are still wild sightings in Australia from pumas left by US navy ages ago.
I reported the sighting but there didn’t seem to be much interest. I was worried about the impact of the presence of these cats on local wildlife. I looked through online local papers, and found several stories of attacks on farm dogs and horses by an unknown wild animal. Also there was a scared kangaroo that ended up in someone’s back yard, although they attributed it to drought conditions. I think there needs to be a campaign to eradicate these pumas to protect our wild and domestic animals, or capture them for return to the USA.
Ocelot found out of usual element
Ocelot found out of usual element
Mysterious carcass sparks debate, interest
By SHANNON TOMPKINS
Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle
April 10, 2010, 6:44PM
A phone call Texas game warden Matthew Waggoner took two weeks ago was like one game wardens and wildlife biologists get every year.Folks regularly contact Texas Parks and Wildlife Department with reports they have seen, photographed or found some dead unusual animal — one that doesn’t exist, is extinct in Texas or is so rare and the report coming from so far from the animal’s range that it’s unlikely the caller saw what he thought he saw.Almost without exception, they are mistaken. The black panther turns out to be a large feral house cat or bobcat. The jaguarundi is really an otter. The wolf is a big coyote or a feral dog. The chupacabra is just a dog or coyote with a bad case of mange.So when Waggoner got word a woman claimed to have found a dead ocelot along Highway 180 between Mineral Wells and Palo Pinto in north-central Texas, he was properly dubious.The nation’s entire population of ocelots consists of fewer than 100 animals in two small patches of habitat in Texas’ Cameron and Willacy counties near the mouth of the Rio Grande.While the medium-sized cat’s range once covered coastal and eastern Texas before habitat destruction and unregulated hunting reduced them to the two remaining pockets at the tip of Texas, there are no historical records of wild populations anywhere close to Palo Pinto County.But the woman was persistent and sincere. She had retrieved the cat carcass, which she at first thought was a bobcat, and took it home. It was an ocelot, she was certain.Waggoner went to check it out.He found a dead ocelot.“It was quite a shock for all of us,” said John Young, a TPWD mammalogist who headed the agency’s handling of the deceased cat.Ocelots are a federally-protected endangered species, and a dead one draws a lot of interest from scientists, law enforcement and the public.“We had a lot of questions, of course,” Young said.
Big find
Was this a wild ocelot? Did it somehow manage to travel 400 miles across Texas from the nearest ocelot population? Or is there a previously unknown and undocumented wild population of them along the upper Brazos River?Or was it something else? Was this out-of-place ocelot an abandoned or escaped pet? Or could it have been a wild ocelot from Mexico, Central or South America (where the gorgeous cats are more numerous) that had been captured, smuggled into the US, then released or escaped?Had it even been hit by a car, or had it died from some other cause?To answer those questions, Young and other scientists conducted what might be called a “CSI: Wildlife” operation.Young took the ocelot to Brownsville where he and staff at the Gladys Porter Zoo conducted a necropsy, the animal version of an autopsy.The cat was a big male, weighing about 36 pounds.That was a clue.“When I saw the ocelot, I said, ‘That’s a chubby boy!,’ ” said Dr. Michael Tewes of Texas A&M-Kingsville’s Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute and arguably the most knowledgeable and experienced ocelot expert in the nation.A large, wild ocelot will weigh a little more than 20 pounds. A huge one might hit 25 pounds.“Chubby” was much heavier, and was carrying considerable fat in his belly.“You don’t see fat, wild ocelots,” Tewes said.The animal didn’t have the marks often seen on pet ocelots — a tattoo or collar with a tag, filed teeth, filed or removed claws. But he didn’t have the usual nicks and scars and other marks wild ocelots get, either, Tewes said. The pads of the cat’s feet were smooth and it didn’t have the ear notches wild ocelots get when they fight or rip their ears on thorns or other hazards they encounter.More clues.An X-ray showed the ocelot had, indeed, died from injuries consistent with being struck by a vehicle — broken ribs, punctured lung and hemorrhaging.The necropsy revealed something else. The cat’s colon was empty and its stomach contained only a couple of shrews (tiny rodents).
Far from home
Wild ocelots are efficient hunters, taking large rodents (rat, rabbits and squirrels) along with birds and reptiles.“An honorable ocelot would not have shrews in his stomach — they’re too small a meal to be of real interest to him,” Tewes said. “It’s an indication of a novice hunter.”For Chubby to be a wandering member of the South Texas ocelot population, he would have had to have travelled much farther than any of the dozens of radio-collared wild ocelots Tewes has studied. The farthest any of those wild cats travelled was 23 miles. Palo Pinto County is 400 miles from the closest known ocelot population.Folks at Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute are using tissue samples from Chubby to produce a DNA profile of the cat. Scientists can use that genetic profile to see if Chubby came from one of the two South Texas populations or has genetic similarities to wild ocelots from other parts of the cat’s range.But all indications are that Chubby was not a wild ocelot. Most likely, he was a pet that either escaped or was abandoned.Ocelots raised in captivity are allowed as pets, although under strict federal permitting. But, so far, no one in the Palo Pinto County area has come forward saying they lost their ocelot.“There are still a lot of questions,” Young said. “But the evidence suggests it’s not a wild ocelot.”“You can never say never,” Tewes said. “But everything I’ve seen supports the view that it’s a non-native cat.”Too bad, either way.shannon.tompkins@chron.com
Two states, one cougar? Tests inconclusive; DNA sample from Twin Cities flawed
Two states, one cougar? Tests inconclusive; DNA sample from Twin Cities flawed
Andy Rathbun arathbun@pioneerpress.com
372 words
23 January 2010
St. Paul Pioneer Press
St. Paul
A7
English
Copyright 2010, NewsBank. All Rights Reserved.
DNA test results from recent cougar sightings in Minnesota and Wisconsin could not confirm that all the sightings were of the same animal.
The tests by wildlife officials did show that the cat seen in Wisconsin’s St. Croix and Dunn counties were the same. But samples collected from sightings in the north suburbs of the Twin Cities weren’t good enough to be compared.
Throughout December, officials responded to cougar sightings that tracked eastward across the metro. Judging from the timing and direction of movement, it’s likely sightings in Minnesota and Wisconsin were of the same animal, said Adrian Wydeven, a mammal ecologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
A cougar was captured on video by a police dash camera the night of Dec. 5 in Champlin. Sightings in Vadnais Heights and Washington County followed.
About a week after the Minnesota sightings, cougar tracks were spotted in Spring Valley, Wis. An image of the cougar later was captured by a trail camera near Downsville, Wis., where it killed and partially ate a buck fawn.
The last sighting of the Wisconsin cougar was Dec. 27 southwest of Eau Claire, said Wydeven. Officials in both states said there have been no confirmed cougar sightings since.
Officials gathered samples of urine, scat and hair from the north suburbs and western Wisconsin sightings and sent them to the U.S. Forestry Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula, Mont., for genetic testing.
DNA testing showed a cougar seen earlier and farther north near Spooner, Wis., was not the one sighted in St. Croix and Dunn counties, Wydeven said.
The samples taken in Minnesota, however, did not have enough genetic information to compare to the western Wisconsin cougar, said Dan Stark of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.
Stark said more of a scat sample taken in Minnesota was sent to the research station for additional testing, but results could be weeks away.
Officials hope testing will also be able to reveal the sex and origin of the cougar, as well as whether it was a wild animal or one that escaped from captivity.
Big Cat News From Around the World 