Eastern cougar declared extinct

NO ANIMAL has as many names as the ‘American lion’. According to the Guinness Book of Records, there are over 40.

Mon, 17 Aug, 2015 - 01:00

The world’s fourth largest cat, however, is not a particularly close relative of the king of beasts; it’s more like an extra-large version of your domestic pussy. Scientists argue as to how many races should be recognised but now there is one less to worry about; the ‘eastern cougar’ has been declared extinct by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

The ‘mountain lion’, ‘puma’ or ‘panther’ is one of the most widely distributed wild mammals in North and South America. It is found from the Yukon to Argentina. Creamy brown, like a slim African lioness, the cougar is about as heavy as an average-sized man. A nocturnal predator, very rarely seen in daylight, it hunts creatures as small as rabbits and as big as horses.

This cat doesn’t attack people unless it’s cornered or protecting its young but newly arrived European settlers, fearing for their livestock, began an extermination campaign. The species managed to survive only in isolated pockets. Cougars are great travellers. With more enlightened public attitudes and legal protection, they have slowly recolonised about a third of their former haunts in north America.

These changes, alas, came too late for the eastern cougar. One trapped and killed by a hunter in 1938 may have been the last of its kind. Sightings of large cats in areas where the eastern cougar was once found are reported from time to time, so the Fish and Wildlife Service kept the sub-species on the endangered list.

After a four-year review of the evidence however, their experts have decided that recent sightings in former cougar haunts were of escaped captive animals, mostly of south American origin. The eastern cougar has now been declared extinct. The Canadian authorities still have an open mind as to whether any survive in its territory.

Trophy-hunting fanatics are less of a threat to cougars nowadays than they were but, according to a 13-year study by scientists at the University of California Davis, humans are responsible for more than half of cougar deaths in the Santa Anna Mountains.

The cats are poisoned, killed by wildfires or shot legally as a public safety measure. The survival rate from year to year is around 56%. Illegal shooting is still a problem but motorways are now a greater threat; cougars find it exceedingly difficult to cross them without coming to grief. Wild creatures of all kinds are becoming isolated from each other by 10-lane highways and encroaching human developments.

It’s important that cougars can travel. Their population is so small and fragmented that inbreeding is becoming a problem. The Davis team analysed DNA samples from 354 cougars in the Golden State. Samples from 97 individuals in the Santa Anna study area showed less genetic diversity than those living elsewhere. Florida panthers became so inbred during the 1990s that some females failed to breed and babies had heart defects.

Genetic isolation is not a problem for cougars in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem in Wyoming, though their population has declined significantly in the last eight years or so.

Panthera, the big-cat conservation organisation, has been carrying out a long-term study in a 2,300km2 area of this great wilderness. Animals have been fitted with radio collars so their movements, territory sizes and den locations can be recorded. Web-cams, installed in the dens and close to locations were they hunt, enable their domestic and feeding activities to be studied.

Now a website is being set up; footage of mothers and cubs, and of cougars inspecting the cameras, will be available to the public. Mark Elbroch of Panthera says the measure “will help demystify this elusive and often misunderstood big cat”.