Proceedings of the Seventh Mountain Lion Workshop

72 CRYPTIC COUGARS · Tischendorf
From ecological, social, and political
standpoints there are three main questions
that this paper seeks to answer. One, are
there cougars in the aforementioned region
today? Two, if pumas are present, do they
represent a breeding population(s)? Finally,
what is the future of Puma concolor east of
the Rocky Mountains? What truly does the
public want when it comes to large
carnivore recovery or restoration in the
East? Possibilities here include active
recovery, passive recovery (i.e., the animals
establish viable populations on their own
without active, direct human intervention),
or overt efforts to preclude recovery.
DISCUSSION
Puma Presence, Populations, and the Big
Picture Perspective
To effectively understand the cryptic
cougar situation, it is critical to maintain a
big picture perspective (Tischendorf 1992c,
1996a, b). Among the many who have
commented on the subject over the years,
and especially among those skeptical of
cougar presence or recovery east of the
Rockies, this perspective, “from Nova
Scotia to Nebraska” (Tischendorf 1996a:43),
has often been lacking (Tischendorf 1992c;
1996a, b). Such a perspective was,
however, utilized by Bruce Wright and,
more recently, by United States Fish and
Wildlife Service (USFWS) researcher
Robert Downing. Downing authored the
eastern cougar recovery plan and speculated
on the presence of an extremely low density,
widely dispersed puma population in the
eastern United States (USA) (Downing
1981, 1984; United States Fish and Wildlife
Service 1982).
Downing’s views, coupled with updated
range information synthesized by Allen
Anderson and intensive independent review
of 100 years’ worth of reports and
documentation, led one author to
subsequently suggest that there were
actually upwards of four loosely interrelated
PROCEEDINGS OF THE SEVENTH MOUNTAIN LION WORKSHOP
puma populations in the East and Midwest
(Downing 1981, 1984; Anderson 1983;
Tischendorf 1993c). Each of these lowdensity
puma populations was believed to
consist of widely dispersed, widely roaming,
and perhaps transient animals (Tischendorf
1993c). These populations were believed to
have their epicenters in the Canadian
Maritimes-New England region, the Great
Lakes-northern Midwest region, the
Missouri-Arkansas-Oklahoma area, and the
Southeast.
This theory of course remains unproven,
although it was revisited at a previous
Mountain Lion Workshop by several of this
author’s colleagues similarly associated with
the West Virginia-based Eastern Cougar
Foundation (ECF) (Bolgiano et al. 2000).
Members of the ECF, formed in 1999, are
utilizing automatic cameras in an attempt to
document consistent cougar presence or
family groups that could support the above
hypothesis. The ECF (website at
www.easterncougar.org) is notable in that it
has been able to positively partner with
several governmental agencies and share in
the efforts to recover pumas in the East.
Such critical cooperation is also
demonstrated with the Eastern Cougar
Network (ECN). This group’s website,
www.easterncougarnet.org, is a nonadvocacy
amalgamation of peer-reviewed
contributions on the subject of cougars from
essentially every state and provincial
resource agency from the Great Plains
eastward. The site thus serves effectively as
a real-time source of scientifically based
status information on the cat, and perhaps
one day other predators including gray
wolves (Canis lupus), black bears (Ursus
americana), lynx (Lynx canadensis), and
wolverines (Gulo gulo) east of the Rockies.
Seemingly integral to the subject of
cougars east of the Rockies is the question
of whether the species persisted in its native
state beyond the days of its supposed