A Cougar Conspiracy?
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on December 10th, 2006
Back in October, I posted an article about the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s investigation of "alleged" mountain lion sightings.
On December 7, the Clarion (PA) News published the following opinion editorial entitled Lions, tigers and bears, oh boy! about the cougar "conspiracy" in Pennsylvania.
You’ve probably heard the conspiracy theories about how someone (or a group of someones), is illegally (re)introducing cougars – aka mountain lions or pumas – into Pennsylvania . The nub of this theory is that cougars, as alpha predators, will have a tremendous impact on our deer herd. And when the deer herd diminishes, hunters will stop buying licenses, the Pennsylvania Game Commission will go belly-up and the Green Team will take control, ultimately banning hunting and taking away our guns.
Whether this theory has any basis in truth or is just the product of fertile imaginations is unknown. Calm and rational people from a number of different scientific disciplines seem to believe this theory is the punch line from a very stupid joke.
This is not to say there isn’t a teeny-weeny flicker of flame underneath all the smoke. There are, for instance, a few calm and rational scientific sorts who believe there are mountain lions among us but they don’t believe it has anything to do with a conspiracy; carelessness perhaps but no conspiracy.
As Vern Ross, former PGC executive director explained, “While some believe mountain lions exist in the wilds of Pennsylvania , we have no conclusive evidence to support such views.” His reference to “no conclusive evidence” meant that there have been no carcasses dragged out of the woods nor picked up alongside the road. He didn’t close the door on the possibility that people are seeing them, though.
“If someone does encounter a mountain lion,” the director said, “the most logical explanation would be that the animal escaped from or was released by someone who either legally or illegally brought the animal into Pennsylvania .” In other words, the official position of the PGC appears to be that we have no native mountain lions in Pennsylvania but an import just might be here.
According to the PGC, “ Pennsylvania ’s last known wild eastern mountain lion was killed in Berks County in 1874. And, except for Florida , the eastern mountain lion is believed to have been extirpated from the East Coast by 1900.” Given the growth of human population since the beginning of the last century, and that populations’ intolerance of big, toothy predators, the PGC’s assertion – mountains lions, if they’re here, either “escaped or (were) released” – makes a great deal of sense.
If you spread a Pennsylvania road map out where you can see the whole thing at once, it is quite obvious there’s a pile of concrete and asphalt stitched across the state. Surely, if a population of mountain lions existed somewhere, they’d start showing up as motor meat.
Despite the lack of publicity, though, one person claims that mountain lions, at least a couple anyway, have been killed on Pennsylvania ’ roads. In a letter to the editor section in a recent issue of a state-wide outdoor newspaper, Norman Davis of Galeton, who claims to “have been a cougar researcher for 13 years,” asserted that two of the tawny cats were picked up off roads in Tioga County, one near Cowanesque Lake and the other along U.S. Route 6 west of Gaines.
While parts of his letter sound credible, his assertion that other cougars – beyond the two in Tioga County – have been killed on Pennsylvania byways but witnesses were “harassed” away from the scene sounds more like part of the “conspiracy theory.” Regardless, no one else will either admit or seems to know anything about the two road kills in Tioga County .
Still, there are other calm and rational scientific people who believe the evidence is strong enough to invest time in research. According to a fellow outdoor writer (who is, by the way, real big on that conspiracy theory), a Dr. Dennis Wydre has submitted a “Scientific Study Permit” application to the PGC in order to obtain both the agency’s official blessing and a few shekels to foot the bill for his work.
At the heart of Dr. Wydre’s research effort, and the reason he had to apply for the PGC’s blessing, is a team of volunteers who have dogs trained to run big cats. Dr. Wydre hopes to establish enough different teams in enough different places across the state that they can “rush to the site of a [reported] sighting and put the dogs down.” Supposedly, although the PGC turned down his application the first time (was it because the PGC is part of the “conspiracy?”), Dr. Wydre went back with political backing and is expected to be more successful with the PGC on this, his second, application.
To make things even more interesting, there’ supposedly “a $2,000 reward to the first person who brings (in) a mountain lion carcass.” The person offering this reward, according to that same fellow outdoor writer (who, may I remind you again, is real big on that “conspiracy theory”) is Mr. Jake Kropp from over in the Williamsport area. Mr. Kropp has also offered an “additional $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in the illegal introduction of western mountain lions into our state.”
Regardless of your position on the conspiracy theory, it’s probably safe to say we have a few mountain lions in residence here in Pennsylvania . There’s enough accumulated evidence that no one, not even the Pennsylvania Game Commission, is willing to argue the feasibility of their existence, only how they happened to get here.
For my part, I hope the calm and rational scientific types are correct. I want very much to believe there’s enough wild and remote ground left in Pennsylvania that a few of these secretive cats have found a home away from the prying eyes of civilization. And I’d also like to believe, even though I agree with the position of the PGC that it’s most likely these are either intentional or unintentional releases, that somewhere in one of those wild and remote places, a mating pair has crossed paths and set up housekeeping.
It’s been a long, long time – probably since back around the Pleistocene era – since there have been any tigers in this part of the world but we’ve got a whole bunch of bears and who knows. If the global warming theories are right, maybe someday we’ll be able to say, “We got lions and tigers and bears, oh boy!”
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
I believe that there has always been a small population of pumas in the Okeefenokee Swamp, and that there has always been a small population along the Appalachian Mountain Range.
I do not think there are enough pumas to account for all the “panther” sightings, and most of those are probably misidentifications. Also, cougar kittens are easy to acquire and they grow up pretty quickly, and I have no doubt that a lot of people abandon those cats when they get too big to be easy to handle. Those released pets probably account for most of the sightings in populated areas.
But there are too many credible sightings, in the wild, in prime puma habitat, for them all to be released pets. Either the eastern puma is making a comeback, or western pumas are dispersing eastward, or most likely both.
I think that the Puma is living well and happy in the wild areas of Pa. They could have gotten here the same way the coyotes did, walk. People who own wild animals I thought had to have a permit from the state. So who checks the inventory or records a dead one?
This may come as surprise, but most states do not require any kind of permit or other documentation for keeping exotic pets. many cities and municipalities do have regulations, but they are not usually strenuously enforced.
In Kentucky, for example, in most communities you can legally own a puma or a leopard (you can’t own a bobcat though; they are considered a native game species and it’s illegal to have them. You can’t even get a permit to keep bobcats unless you are a zoo or a wildlife rehabilitation facility.)
As far as “checking inventory” or tracking exotic pets that die, that is simply not done.
They are in MA. Several sightings and suspicious kills far into relatively populated areas such as Gloucester/Cape Ann and towards the Cape (Cod). I live in the Worcester Hills in Central MA and surprisingly nothing here besides coyotes, bears and the occasional alien abduction (Ashburnham-“Andreasson Affair”) But you don’t tend to see the cats until they are dead or it is too late.
Seems to me if there is a sizable population of deer then there can be big cats. Predators find food and animals learn to avoid humans.
Gotta love a good conspiracy though. If we look closely at the grassy knoll it is clear that there is a big cat with a map of Pennsylvania…. 🙂
Having just moved from New Jersey, I can tell you that they could use some cougars there to thin out the deer population. There was an awful lot of deer road kill in the eastern Monmouth County area where I was from; it’s obvious that the predator/prey balance is out of kilter in the Garden State. Of course, most citizens in this densely populated state would freak about the idea of importing cougars, but I’m old enough to remember when there were virtually no bear in the state and folks were freaking out over talk of introducing black bear into the Pinebarrens. Well, the bears wandered over from Pennsylvania in such great numbers in the last decade or two that Jersey now holds an annual bear hunt, and they have probably wandered into the Pinebarrens by now anyway. Why NOT introduce a few cougars there too? Theres SO MUCH deer in New Jersey that I don’t think the cats would give us people a second look.
I saw two cougars, mountain lions, pumas (or whatever you want to call them) when I was 14 y/o one night, back in Tennessee. My younger cousin was with me and saw them as well. They were young and looked grayish in color, although that could have been due to a lack of light (the moon was just past New and there was no street light on that corner of the block).
The local area is called “midway” (on account of it being midway between South Pittsburg, and Richard City, TN. We saw the two cougars on the corner of Hamilton and the 14th st block. There are some trails that lead back into the hills which overlook a rock quarry. Just at the top of the rock quarry there were shallow pools of water and it seems like every time we hiked up there we saw mountain lion tracks consistently.
Planning to go hiking in that same area again with a couple of buddies when I go back to TN, around the middle of next week. Hopefully gather some hard evidence to establish the existence of a breeding population in the area.
It is a charming notion to think of bears, wolves and cougars wandering about areas they were hunted from so long ago. Deer are everywhere in the south also, and body shops gleefully count the money they make from deer vs. car encounters down here. A little more thinning out would be great. So much of the rural lifestyle has vanished to the point that in certain areas that need thinning the most, they can’t give permits away. Predation by black bears and wolves might restore some balance that has been missing for so long. Other than the howl of wolves most people could only fear a pet disappearing from time to time (like the coyotes). Black bears would always prefer to go away from people (unless you count the time I saw some yahoos at a state park pick up a baby bear for a picture before the mother stormed out of the brush). Cats are another matter and I have often wondered how people would handle the the big cats presence on the east coast. It has been shown upon capture that some man killers are young juveniles or healthy adults. Thus you have a large, intelligent predator that even when healthy may well regard a hiker, mountain biker or home gardener as prey. Like Stompy sez, you don’t see the cats until they are dead or its too late (for you).
A thousand cougars living east of the Mississippi and spread around from Maine to Meridian wouldn’t make a dent in the deer population. There are nearly one million hunters banging away every fall and winter and we have more deer every year.
Coyote predation, now endemic across the Eastern U.S. and unheard of thirty years ago hasn’t made a dent in the deer herds. So bring on the catamounts and the Sasquatch, they’ll make the woods more interesting. Plenty of deer for everyone. The real scary thing is that the deer wasting disease, will morph into some kind of mad cow disease and jump from overpopulated deer herds to our domestic meat market and wipe out cougars, coyotes, stray Sasquatch and grandma.
I think it’s very likely that you had surviving pockets of cougars in PA. Or that survivors migrated in from MD, OH, or NY. They’re so good at avoiding people that you usually need dogs to hunt them, so it’s no surprise that they aren’t seen that often.
The conspiracy theory is a little farfetched. You would need a huge cougar population to dig into the deer population enough to reduce the number of hunting permits. And I think even that is unlikely. Deer can exist in really developed suburban areas. They would just build up their numbers there and migrate back out into less developed areas.
And if the cougar populations got that large what makes the conspirators think they wouldn’t start a season for cougars? I doubt the gun control and anti-hunting lobbies would put that much effort into something like this, my guess is that they’d just throw more effort into their lobbying, propaganda, and fundraising.
hey craig good evening definitely a very informative new article about cougars. I never knew there was some sort of conspiracy on cougars this is getting very interesting indeed. has there been any sightings of sasquatch creatures seen with cougars I’m just wondering.
Great website- I would like to share a couple of stories related to the PA cougar.
My uncle deer hunts in the Mountains in Central – Western part of PA and had a very clear sighting 4 years ago. He watched a large cougar walk past his stand. The sighting lasted about 2 minutes and he observed the animal through a 10 power scope when it was further away and with the naked eye when it was closer. It was first observed at around a hundred yards and came as close a forty yards before walking away. The terrain was fairly open so he had clean unobstructed views through most of the sighting.
Others in his deer camp have had partial sightings where they thought they saw cougar but this was the first clear sighting.
My uncle is very credible and does not make up or exaggerate stories. He is a very serious guy and I have no doubt that he saw a cougar.
Another story I want to pass on is one told to me by a deer hunting guide in Garrett County – the far western portion of Maryland. This area is very rural, mountainous, and surrounded by western PA to the North and West Virginia to the south.
The guide told me he found a deer carcass high in a tree in one of his remote hunting areas. He also says he has found deer carcasses that were in various stages of being eaten in the same area on other occasions. He has never observed a cougar first hand but he can not think of what else could possibly get an adult deer that high in a tree.
If you don’t think the Wildlife depts. in some states can stonewall on certain issues, I can assure you that they do! Here in South Carolina, in Anderson and Abbeville counties starting in the early 1980’s, we were seeing several large cats. I personally have seen a very large black cat I would estimate at over 100lbs. I was within 20 feet of this cat for about 2 mins. I have seen these cats 7 times myself and there are a ton of people besides me who saw them. There was also another or maybe 2 more that were not entirely black, more like a blotchy brown/ black. We have observed these sitting on a hill while my neighbor bush hogged his fields. I assumed they were catching rats and rabbits he scared out of the fields. Anyway, we tried to get the SC wildlife dept. to investigate this many times and we always got the same story, the cats don’t exist and we were seeing bobcats. They never acknowledged that the cats were here, even with many, many eyewitnesses, tracks and lots of people hearing their screams.
Ignorance is just as prevalent among scientists and wildlife pros as among the rest of the population.
And we, and they, are possibly the most ignorant, all of us, about what we “know.” When something doesn’t fit the paradigms we’ve set up, a natural reaction is to just presume it ain’t so.
Which makes it to me pretty plausible that mountain lions have reoccupied a significant portion of their former Eastern range. After all we have more forest in the East now than we did after the Revolution. Our population may be much bigger. But it’s largely much more ignorant about nature than it was back when people hunted for survival, not recreation and a dinner table change of pace.
When you’re somewhat removed from nature — and even hunters today are much more so than hunters once were — you can miss stuff that’s right under your figurative nose.
If a ten-foot ape can elude scientific discovery for this long, it ought to be a snap for a stealthy, 80-to-100-pound cat, ferpetesake.
My buddy and I just saw another cougar this weekend in Sullivan County, NY, directly across the Delaware River from PA. That makes three sightings in less than two years. They weren’t bobcats, since we’ve seen a couple of those as well. One cougar was quite large, over 130 lbs for sure, while the other two (could have been the same one for all we know) were a little larger than our chocolate Labrador retriever with a tail as long as its torso. They’re definitely around the area.
Bob K., we have Cougars in NJ. There have been several reports that I have read of, including deer kills and shot deer found with healed claw marks on them. It is also likely that some of the clawed footprints said to have been made by the Jersey Devil were in fact Cougar tracks. My best friend’s mother saw one as roadkill once up in North Jersey, while down in South Jersey, his wife’s father shot several on his farm back in the 50’s or 60’s. They’re here, they’re near, get used to it.
I have talked to farmers here in southwest Ohio who in the 1960’s had cougars on there property. I talked to one guy who went bowhunting one morning. He got in his stand, as it got light he noticed a lump in a tree about 50yds. away. The “lump” climbed down and walked off. He said it was a big cat. I have no doubt that they were here. Whether they still are I don’t know.
I lived in New York nearly my whole life and I know for a FACT we have wild roaming Mountain Lions in the woods. I have seen two dead ones shot by farmers, one of which had a tracking collar on and was imediantly taken by the DEC, the other was turned over to the DEC. Both cats had been killed while eating dead livestock.
I dont see why there has been a big “cover up” of sorts by the Conservation. Pumas have been around the east for years and as the weather seems to be getting milder each year many species are coming back. There was actually a Moose sighted in northern NY this year and also a couple Elk, though I beleive the elk had escaped.
As for the big cats ending our deer population, I can safely say that we are over run in the Catskills and the DEC has been doing controlled removal hunts for the past few years. I doubt a small population of Lions will put a damper on the population any..
I have been watching the stories of cougar sightings in Michigan the last few years and have learned a few things. Cougars are solitary animals. If you see 2, they are either mating or a female/cub combo. The only predator for a cougar is another cougar, where a larger male could kill a territorial rival. And speaking of territories, a cougar has a 50 mile radius. They will travel long distances to establish their own territories to avoid conflicts with others. A juvenile cougar in a new territory may consider anything prey. They have no fear of humans having never been hunted. There have been credible sightings in the midwest from Iowa to Ohio, which suggests a migration from western states being plausible. The truth of the matter could be a combined effort of western migration, eastern species remnants, and release of exotic pets. It is obvious that they exist. Regardless how they got there, they should be acknowledged for safety of both, people and cats.
I just read a post in another blog about a woman who just saw a roadkilled puma, I think she said it was on Dec. 14, about 40 miles from Lexington, KY, beside the Bluegrass Parkway (which crosses central Kentucky).
There were no pictures, and I have not been able to find any more info on it anywhere. Has anyone else seen anything about that sighting?
This article got me to wondering about Kentucky’s wildlife laws, in researching those laws, I find that I was wrong about Kentucky laws regulating big cats: it appears that I was behind the times, so to speak. Kentucky has gone from having almost no restrictions against keeping non-native animals, to very tough restrictions.
Kentucky passed laws regulating the sale, breeding, and keeping of exotic cats (and other wildlife) in 2005, which are among the strongest and most restrictive laws in the country. People who already own exotic pets were grandfathered in, provided that their animals are properly housed and cared for under the new laws, but the new legislation makes it very tough to legally acquire or keep exotic cats in the commonwealth of Kentucky.
I am not sure whether pumas are considered “exotic” under the new laws. They are “animals native to Kentucky, but which are considered to have been extirpated from the state”. If such animals would be “unable to exist under natural circumstances if released into the wild” then they are considered to be “exotic”.
Since pumas’ natural prey is mainly deer, but also elk, rabbits, and woodchucks, and turkeys, all of which exist in the wild in Kentucky, a puma which was released could conceivably survive very well in the wild, provided it could teach itself to hunt. I’m trying to get some more precise information about the pumas’ legal status in Kentucky and I’ll post it as soon as I get reliable information.