Cougar came from South Dakota

Officials say the cougar killed on a Connecticut highway in June migrated all the way from South Dakota--some 1,500 miles. This raises the questions: could cougars re-establish themselves in the Northeast?

Click here and here for more details.

You just made my day. Thanks for the info!

"The beast is in the garden".

Wow -- that's awesome ! (except for the getting hit by car part)

Pretty amazing journey!

David Baron's "Beast in the Garden" is one of my all time favorite books. Highly recommend it.

BBC has an article up on this too:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14303496

Oops, misread the title and thought you were talking about a different type of cougar.

Sad he/she came all that way, only to be hit by a car in suburbia :-(

una_dogger said:

Sad he/she came all that way, only to be hit by a car in suburbia :-(

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It is sad, but I'm guessing that he/she didn't come all that way by herself. I would bet someone picked him/her up as a kitten and brought him/her back here.

Ed, read the article. Same individual cat was sighted in Minnesota and in Wisconsin last year and the year before. (Identity confirmed by DNA from scat and hair samples from those places.)

Ok, I am just going to put this out there and see if anyone has any thoughts on this.

First off, let me say that I am cautiously optimistic about what may be the first real evidence of a wild cougar in the NE.

However, I am still trying to wrap my brain around the amazing journey this animal has made -- and wonder "why East when there would seem to be less fragmented paths to follow West and South?".

Here is an idea that I have kicked around since I myself saw a cougar in Poughquag NY in my back meadow around 2005-2006 during an extremely dry summer.

I was told that the cougar had been sighted in Pawling, Dover, and Kent CT -- always near the AT corridor (makes sense).

I was also told that Orvis in Pawling had taken pictures of the cougar with a motion detecting camera and displayed these photos in thier store...I have never seen the photos so this is all heresy.

One thing that's hung in mind since then, is that the suspicion that perhaps this cat (along with others or other big game) was potentially live poached illegally and brought to the area to be used as trophy hunting game on one of the MANY hunting preserves in Dutchess County that are frequented by rich trophy hunters (such as Dick Cheney who became a regular and wreaked traffic nightmares whenever he and half the secret service came to town).

We certainly live in a country where money can buy you anything -- why not an illegal opportunity to kill a cougar on the weekend without having to travel out West?

This is ALL conjecture -- but inrally wonder what goes on in those private hunting reserves....and if it might explain how this cat got all the way east without suffering a similar fate in one of the many developed seas it would have to cross to get here?

Discuss! ;-)

Please forgive the typos, I am posting from an IPhone an it's extremely tedious!!

Edits to above text:

Inrally= I really

Seas= areas

And

Heresy= here say (lol)

una_dogger said:

However, I am still trying to wrap my brain around the amazing journey this animal has made -- and wonder "why East when there would seem to be less fragmented paths to follow West and South?".

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You and the cougar have/had very different information available. You have knowledge of the entire US and can think of overall paths and good destinations which enables you to "see" whether it is worth crossing a gap. The cougar (at best) could know only its immediate surroundings and where it had been and had to make its moves based on that info. And in some cases, it may have had to make random guesses or react to temporary or minor issues.

FWIW, the East is overloaded with good cougar food--deer.

What surprises me is not where the animal ended up, but how far it got before it was shot or hit by a car.

Doug

DougPaul said:

What surprises me is not where the animal ended up, but how far it got before it was shot or hit by a car.

Doug

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Exactly!!

I wonder what Sue Morse thinks about this Catamount?

http://www.keepingtrack.org/article/articleview/3207/1/388/index.html

It is amazing that the animal in question came this far east. I'm not sure how far young male mountain lions travel to find their own home range, but not this far, generally, it seems. I think we should be open to all possibilities. From what little I know about mountain lions (not much!mainly what I just read on the internet!) it seems like it is not unusual for them to travel 25 miles a day in search of food. If the critter traveled roughy 800 miles from Wisconsin, that is only 32 days. Of course, It didn't have a map, didn't go 25 miles every day, and didn't travel in a straight line via the shortest distance between WI and CT....

All we do know is that it was in WI a year ago, and SD before that. I hope we learn more about this animal's journey in the days ahead!

Probably got sick of all the damn DNA testing and decided to move East.

This post prompted by unadogger who apparently lives in my neck of the woods. About 10 years ago while paddling thru the great swamp in Patterson my wife and I came upon a mountain lion on the west shore (the section between Patterson environmental park and Texas Taco/Rt 22).I believe there is a private hunting preserve nearby on Rt 164 and we supposed this is where he came from. He seemed to be as curious about us as we were him. We were with another (talkative) couple who never saw him, he ran away when he heard them approaching. They were about 50 yards behind us. They thought we made up a story.

nyestreet said:

This post prompted by unadogger who apparently lives in my neck of the woods. About 10 years ago while paddling thru the great swamp in Patterson my wife and I came upon a mountain lion on the west shore (the section between Patterson environmental park and Texas Taco/Rt 22).I believe there is a private hunting preserve nearby on Rt 164 and we supposed this is where he came from. He seemed to be as curious about us as we were him. We were with another (talkative) couple who never saw him, he ran away when he heard them approaching. They were about 50 yards behind us. They thought we made up a story.

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NY Native until 2006 ~ I saw the cougar when I lived on Gardner Hollow Rd, Poughquag on 60 acres directly adjacent to 2300 landlocked acres which includes the 1300 acre AT Nuclear Lake Tract (where I was voluntary boundary monitor for a time). You could say I had my own private little nirvana there. The area is RICH with wildlife -- black bear, coyotes, deer, bobcat--I even saw the Moose who supposedly wandered down the AT and was struck dead on Rt 22 while I was making my daily rounds of my backdoor herdpath/Beekman Uplands Loop/AT dogwalk with Terra.

When I last hiked the Beekman Uplands Loop on a visit in 2009; I saw Moose droppings, so...go figure.

I saw the cougar I believe in the summer of 2004 or 2005.

Its a GREAT area -- and much of why its landlocked is because private game farms own the surrounding acreage. As you probably know, there are many such private reserves in Eastern Dutchess County, mainly above Rt 55.

Sorry we never met when I was local, StreetNye! The Great Swamp is a amazing area. Miss the Texas Taco..does the woman with the Mohawk still run it?? Interesting collection of lawn ornaments there...I <3 NY.

una_dogger said:

Sad he/she came all that way, only to be hit by a car in suburbia :-(

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Why do you think some of us are so eager to get *out* of CT suburbia?

I haven't been in the Texas Taco (still open) in 5 or 6 years so I don't know about the woman w/ the mohawk. My 23 yr old daughter (college student) currently sports a multi colored mohawk.

Yes a fantastic area.

nyestreet said:

. My 23 yr old daughter (college student) currently sports a multi colored mohawk.

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SUNY New Paltz?