No cougar populations in Upper Midwest or Eastern Canada IP: 70.101.130.192 Posted on January 17, 2014 at 02:03:43 PM by Grasshopper
To have a population, females and kittens must be documented. The closest population of cougars in Canada is in the Cypress Hills, on the Alberta-Saskatchewan border. The closest US populations to the Northeast are in the Badlands of SW North Dakota and the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming.
McCullough had two choices when he wrote the report for the USFWS recommending delisting of the "eastern cougar." He could declare the "eastern cougar" extinct, or he could say that the "eastern cougar" never existed. Either option would enable the FWS to wash their hands of cougars (except for the Florida panther) and turn the issue over to individual state wildlife agencies, just as they hope to do with grey wolves. I suspect the FWS opted to declare the eastern cougar extinct because if they had not, they'd have to deal with the classification of the Florida panther, which according to Culver, is the same subspecies as all other North American cougars. Replies: