The New York Times banner
The New York Times, November 28, 1997

Pawprint Gives Hope That Cougar, Presumed Extinct, Lives

Wildlife officials have been prowling the woods around this community in search of an animal that has long been presumed extinct: an Eastern cougar.

Mike Bailey, with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, knows that the odds are dauntingly against them. No one has seen a real Eastern cougar, sometimes called a ghost cat or a mountain lion, in at least 20 years.

But three months ago in this southern scattering of Appalachian Mountains, reports of sightings began coming in. Mr. Bailey and other officers with the agency were skeptical. Usually sightings turn out to be bobcats or dogs.

But one day this fall, a caller was vehement. "Come and see the tracks for yourself," he said.

When he did, Mr. Bailey, a 22-year veteran of wildlife resource management, recalled, "I just about dropped on the ground."

Cougars are so rare that, outside of the Florida Everglades, no one can say for sure whether they even exist anymore in the entire Eastern portion of the country. And although a subspecies of cougars roams areas of the West, they are among the rarest animals in North America.

But now, with the plaster casts of a track measuring more than four inches from heel to toe, Mr. Bailey and other wildlife biologists say they are certain there are two cougars roaming the mountain ridges near the Alabama border, where the Tennessee River forms the Grand Canyon of the Tennessee. One of the cats, they say, appears to be a cub.

What remains to be seen -- if the ghost cats play along -- is what variety of cougar has made a home here.

Biologists have identified three basic subspecies: the Western Cougar of the Rockies and California; the Florida panther of the Everglades, and the Eastern cougar, which has not been seen in decades.

There is a chance that the cougars that left the tracks are the descendants of a group of three to six cougars that were in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park region in 1975.

There are other possible explanations: Mr. Bailey and other wildlife officers, who have watched the Southern wilderness become less wild with each new road and subdivision, rationalize that perhaps this mother cat was someone's pregnant pet Western cougar that got away or was released from captivity by someone in Alabama, where exotic animal laws are lax.

Or, he says, maybe it is an endangered Florida panther that has drifted into Tennessee.

But Mr. Bailey is pulling for the underdog.

"Some of the field folks think it's probably an illegally dumped or escaped Western or even South American cougar," he said. "I don't know what it is. But we're assuming it's endangered and we're protecting it under the Endangered Species Act until we find out."

He does not want to capture the animals, but document the improbable.

Nora Murdock, a biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service, however, says that if the animal is an Eastern cougar, officials would have to deal with the question of an in-captivity breeding program to try saving the cat from extinction.

"Proving it's not an Eastern cougar will be easier than proving it is," Ms. Murdock said. "If we could get a little tissue -- even a hair -- we could do some chromosome work."

-----------------------------------
thanks, CB.






In accordance with US Code Title 17, Section 107,
this material is distributed without profit or monetary gain
to those who have expressed an interest in receiving the material
for research and non-profit news and educational purposes.