Doc:

Thanks for posting the link to the photo and story. Very interesting. I bet you will see a similar story and photograph about a mountain lion in Pennsylvania within the next couple of years.

no problem.

I will be happy when they report sightings of mountain lions in central park.

Have the enviromentalists determined what types of predators are native to central park? Didn't think so, they can keep the wolves.

Aaron

A guy in northern wis has a game cam pic of a mt lion. DNR says it most likely a house cat.

"...Darrell Land, statewide Florida panther coordinator for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, called roadkill "an effective sampling method," though regrettably not one that permits returning "sampled" animals to the population..."


I see one small flaw with this analogy - the roads in the habitat area. I'm not familiar with MO or WI but if there isn't a major interstate through the cat's prefered habitat its unlikely there will be significant roadkill. I compare it to our local bear & coyotes - both expanding into the area but the bears seem much more susceptable to roadkill than coyotes judging by reports... or is it simply that its illegal to take the bear home and coyotes don't cause enough damage to stop???

To imply road kill is a valid sampling method is to imply the cougar is not as smart as a coyote - how many dead coyotes do you see on the road? Here in Georgia we are saturated with coyotes and yet you very seldom see one dead on the road. I think this is like the explainations for a lot of other things - call it anything but what it really is. I cannot see any real purpose in doing so, however. Calls to mind a story of one of our first bear hunts here in Georgia - seems our DNR live trapped an area to determine how many bears were there so they would know how many permits to issue, etc. Hunt was held, bears were bagged and surprise, surprise - not a single tagged bear was taken, not even from the areas the DNR said had the heaviest population. One DNR spokesperson actually admitted on TV that 'we really don't know how many bears we have!' Quite sure we could hear other stories from other state's DNR agenies that would be very close.