Long-Lost Species Returns Home After A Century In Exile

 

 

By Melissa Cronin

13 October 2014

 

For the last 100 years, cougars have been absent from the forests of Wisconsin, a state where they once roamed. The Department of Natural Resources confirmed two cougar sightings on trail cameras this week — bringing the total number of sightings in 2014 to three. These, coupled with a handful of others in the past few years, have led experts to say that the cougar is likely back in Wisconsin for the first time since 1910.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, it's possible that the two sightings could’ve been of the same animal — they were spotted about 90 miles away from one another about three weeks apart.

(Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources)

Wisconsin was included in the cougars’ historic range — but not the exact same kind of cougar. Originally, the eastern cougar, a subspecies of cougar that biologists believe to be extinct, roamed the state. Now, the western cougar, another species, is coming in from South Dakota, eyeing the large deer populations in Wisconsin.

(Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources)

But, as professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Timothy Van Deelen told the local Sawyer County Record, the population is far from established. Thus far, only male cougars have been spotted. “You can’t have a population until the females show up,” he said.

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