Proceedings of the Seventh Mountain Lion Workshop

78 CRYPTIC COUGARS · Tischendorf
frequently perceived by natural resource
agencies as a “species non grata”, few
intensive prospective documentation efforts
have ever been undertaken (Van Dyke1983,
McGinnis 1988, Humphreys 1994). To this
author’s knowledge, east of the Black Hills
and north of Florida and southern Georgia
no free-ranging puma has ever been radioinstrumented
or otherwise marked and
tracked.
What we are left with in the case of
pumas east of the Rockies are largely
sighting reports and compilations of sighting
reports. Such data are often met with
incredulity, yet historically the scientific
literature, particularly that related to
carnivores, is replete with papers involving
nothing more than sighting reports. Articles
by Berg et al. (1983), involving pumas, and
Quinn (1995), who worked with urban
coyotes, are but two of many peer-reviewed
examples of which this author is aware.
Where people are reporting unknown or
unsuspected animals, it often seems one is
eventually killed and populations are
subsequently substantiated, vindicating
those who originally reported sightings.
Furthermore, the survival of rare animals
often depends on timely and critical
decision-making. If sighting reports are the
best with which a researcher has to work,
and particularly if some level of scientific
rigor can be applied to their interpretation,
as demonstrated by Quinn’s coyote research
involving sighting reports in Washington, D.
C., then it is unscientific and ill advised to
carte blanche ignore such reports (Quinn
1995).
In the case of colonization or repopulation,
by definition there is a temporal
continuum of occurrence. Early in the
process, the animals in question are few.
Colonization, re-colonization, or repopulation
ends, if successful, with a selfsustaining
population. The puma
phenomenon east of the Rocky Mountains is
PROCEEDINGS OF THE SEVENTH MOUNTAIN LION WORKSHOP
presumably somewhere along this
continuum. Evidence presented at this
conference suggests puma presence in some
areas of the West, for instance east-central
and eastern New Mexico, is on the same
continuum (Rick Winslow, New Mexico
Game and Fish Department, personal
communication).
The question of breeding is, of course,
pivotal in the discussion of purported puma
populations and presence. Here again,
however, other than efforts to collect
sighting reports, there has been little formal,
proactive modern research on the species in
eastern North America so information on
this topic is limited. Nonetheless, some
useful information can be derived from the
available data. In the 1970s or early 1980s,
a string of credible eyewitness reports
suggested the presence of an adult puma and
kitten(s) along the Blue Ridge Parkway
(Robert Downing, USFWS, retired, personal
communication). A carnivore biologist
claims to have observed a family group of
pumas in northern Minnesota in the 1970s
(Bill Berg, Minnesota Department of
Natural Resources, retired, personal
communication). More recently in
Minnesota, breeding was also implied in the
case of the female puma killed outside
Duluth in 2001 (Anonymous 2002). In her
company were two kittens, both later
captured and placed into captivity (Mark
Dowling, Eastern Cougar Network, personal
communication). The cougar killed in Floyd
County, Kentucky in 1997, cited earlier, had
spotted pelage and was in the company of at
least one other, larger cat, when it was
struck by a car (Bolgiano 2001). A
biological scientist observed a puma and
several kittens in Missouri in the early
1990s. This is one of several episodes,
including the poaching of a cougar (Texas
County, cited earlier) and the videotaping of
a puma at a deer kill that triggered a
substantial increase in public and agency