Feline Fires... Of Sparks and Men

“There is a surge in cougar sightings across the east and the government is partly responsible.”

Daryl Ratajczak

Former Chief of Wildlife

Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency

Within the last few years there has been a dramatic upswing in the number of reported sightings of cougars east of the Mississippi. Sometimes these reports have accompanying images, sometimes it’s eyewitness accounts. It seems that both images and testimony flood the internet and social media. Of course, that means that official news outlets as well as web-based media outlets are abuzz with the warnings about this once-native predator returning to our eastern landscapes. It’s not uncommon to see these stories – or the informal sources like social media – revving up to ‘educate’ the general public. Of course, what follows is an influx of both solicited and unsolicited feedback from “armchair biologists” qualifying the story or image or whatever ‘evidence’ has been submitted as authentic. Maybe not as overt are the speculations on how these cougars – long-absent from the east, excluding the Florida pocket population – are getting here. Opinions are speculative and cover everything from natural range expansion to covert or subversive (and always-denied) government releases.

The big question is: What caused this apparent feline invasion?

The answer is simple: imagination and misinformation. But some of the speculation on the number of cougar sightings may have some merit because, unfortunately, the government bears a lion’s share of that responsibility (pun intended) simply by staying quiet on the issue.

What has happened is that sightings of wild, free-ranging cougars in the east are often “created” because, in the vast majority of cases, they aren’t really there. Cougars haven’t lived on the eastern landscapes for decades and most places are far from having year-round populations.

Before we get into the reasoning of why stories are created, so everyone knows, outside of the known population of cougars near the Everglades, there are no documented year-round breeding populations of cougars in what we call the east (east of Mississippi River).  That “no” means none.  Zero.  Zip.  Nada.  Not one known breeding population anywhere in the east.

Once upon a time, many decades ago, cougars ranged all over North America; the eastern cat, however, has long been gone from our eastern forests. In fact, some years ago the eastern cougar was officially declared extinct by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.  Plenty of organizations and individuals have tried to prove that these cats are still in the east but after all the time, technology, and patience the conclusions remains the same: there are no resident cougars in the east, so all we have left is the western subspecies.

So why are cougar sightings being reported routinely?

First the biology...

Those western cat populations are actually doing pretty well. In recent history a very small number of them have decided to venture eastward – mostly young males who, like the Johnny Lee song says, are "looking for love in all the wrong places." Actually these cats are just looking for a home where they're not going to get their butt kicked by a dominant male. Anyway, those frisky young males are midwestern nomads, they're wanderers. 

The thing to understand is that these cats never travel in complete secrecy for long.  They don’t just pop-up one day on the East coast and show up on the nightly news. They are often documented along the midwestern front first and have their picture taken quite regularly (map below). These images are incidental – someone having a trail camera set up to check out deer in their hunting area, security cameras, and so on.  There’s so many ways to get an incidental picture that we wind up with a nice imagery chain showing where the cat goes.  Many of these nomads even leave behind DNA calling cards within scat or hair samples.

Keep in mind, most of those midwestern states where these nomadic journeys start are still struggling to establish or maintain stable cougar populations. Usually these nomads might find what they’re looking for – love and secure resources – and settle down. On really rare occurrences, like “more rare than even saying once in a while”, a midwestern cat will venture further eastward.

So yes, there have been a few confirmed sightings of single cats in the east. But it’s important to understand that a single cat doesn’t mean there are cougars. No reproduction or evidence of reproduction (i.e. cubs) has ever been documented or photographed, at least in the last half century (probably much more). Reproduction is obviously a necessary requirement for a year-round population so it is with great and unwavering certainty that we know eastern cougar populations do not exist.

So why is this so often an argument?  Why is it that so many people believe that cougar populations are alive and well and that individual cats are being seen all over the eastern half of the country?

Now the psychology...

A spark is lit by an easily explained situation and a firestorm erupts. The public’s desire and need for wow-worthy stories fans the flames. It’s an exciting and engaging topic, after all.  Who doesn’t think the possibility of an apex predator roaming your home town makes for thrilling table talk?  So what are some supported talks for the table?

Let’s start with a couple of well-known feline explorers, both inadvertently well documented, that caused sparks. The first was a young cougar born of the Dakota lineage that, in 2011, made his way across the Great Lake states and parts of the Northeast only to meet his demise on a highway in Connecticut. Along his travels (it’s ok if you hear the Johnny Lee song in your head) he was photographed and left DNA evidence. The second long-distance traveler was a cat that crossed the Mississippi in 2015 and began her eastward trek in Northwest Tennessee. Over the course of a year it travelled eastward toward the Tennessee River Valley and it had its picture taken at least eight different times along its route. The cat disappeared in the fall of 2016 and has not been photographed since.  

Someone may point out that we “left out” the 2014 Kentucky cat.  Long story short, Kentucky wildlife agents killed a large male cougar that was treed in the heart of Kentucky. The problem was that a lengthy and thorough investigation revealed it was not a wild cat, most likely. Everything from its age, health, lack of parasites, and complete lack of any incidental documentation all pointed to it being a captive animal. But by then it was too late, the fires were already raging and while the media (social or legitimate) love to start a fire, they don’t make nearly the effort to put one out or correct misinformation.

As you can imagine the cats caused quite a national stir as their photos were plastered across television screens and newspapers alike. What followed maybe wasn’t unexpected, but there were many jumps to one erroneous conclusion: cougars were back and state wildlife agencies were, “...finally admitting they were here.”

The problem is that the public “at large” misconstrued what was really going on.  It’s all in how it’s worded, right?  Sure, there was a cat. Singular.  A cat.  Maybe there were 3 over that span of years in different locations but the fact is: when it is logically considered, the photos plastered across headlines documenting the journey and duration of a cat’s actually confirms that we don’t have anything resembling even a seed for a population of cougar anytime in the near future within the east.  If we had even a small population or even a small but stable number of cats roaming the east, the images wouldn’t be a big deal.  It would be cool, sure.  But it really verifies cats’ nonexistence on our landscape when one shows up, it gets photographed like crazy, and when the individual disappears, the photos stop.

I hope that in my lifetime these cats may find their forever homes back in the east.  I think ‘in my lifetime’ may be a little optimistic but over time, given the cats’ long-ranging characteristics, it will eventually happen naturally (unless people interfere one way or the other to change that natural timeline). The interesting thing is, once that happens, we learn we can share our landscape with cougars just as easily as we do with bears, deer, and other large mammals.  They lose the mythic quality and, for cougars, hopefully some of the antiquated prejudice that so many people still have. 

Until then, while the mystique and aura of cougars on the landscape is planted in the minds of the people, the ‘sightings’ burst forward like juicy gossip from nosy neighbor’s lips. Why? People are just crazy?  Not really.  The answer is actually simple: the eye is the easiest thing to fool and a thirsty-for-excitement brain does quick work to create convincing image in the mind’s eye. Those “hmmm it could be” images? I won’t say that every single blurry, indistinct, or night-time image is not a cougar… but I will say that the vast majority are just our brain telling our eyes what we want to see.  Think about it... people WANT to see a cougar because their story becomes instant table talk.

Although most sightings are easily explained by misidentification, once a story of a presumed cougar sighting is shared, the legend grows. It’s a vicious cycle: a single ‘sighting’ becomes an explosive incendiary device, igniting fires everywhere. Regardless of its authenticity, that initial story spawns another, and another, and…. These unconfirmed sightings get shared far and wide and suddenly become “fact.” In days before social media, this wasn’t much of an issue because local tales pretty much stayed local. A small group may be misinformed but not the masses. Nowadays tall tales grow to epics as connectivity promotes widespread misinformation regionally (at best) to globally (at worst).

But alas, social media alone is not the most dangerous incendiary device. It is when our news media spreads the fake news. There are countless news reports generated in print or on television that report “possible” cougar sightings. Even when suspected sightings are debunked immediately for misidentification, they usually don’t pull the story and explain the error.  Why? The story makes for awesome table talk and ratings.

For example, a number of years ago a cougar was reportedly seen in a suburb of Nashville, TN. The state wildlife agency investigated and positively identified the animal as a golden lab; yet “Topping tonight’s eyewitness news...a cougar sighting in Nolensville” was heard in the background over the evening dinner.

An even more egregious news report was the unfortunate deaths of multiple ponies blamed on a cougar. This was even after a Southeastern wildlife agency investigated the scene and concluded these ponies were not even killed by a wild animal. These professionals see and deal with dead animals on a daily basis, their careers rely on valuable input.  Yet their input was almost wholly dismissed.  The sheriff’s department suddenly became ‘the voice of the people’ and kept promoting a dangerous wild animal on the loose. The most offensive part of the story came days later when a news agency used an out-of-context picture of a house cat and warned the public of a cougar while continuously misquoting the state wildlife agency about local cougar existence. A few weeks after that the same news agency posted a rather-grainy picture of a bobcat and suggested it was some sort of “big cat” on the loose and to STAY ON ALERT. The public wasn’t sparked… they were hit with an atom bomb of misinformation. Is it no wonder the public is so misinformed about wildlife?

So why is this the governments fault?  Well, besides the fact that they seem to always be a stable target for conspiracy and blame, when talks begin to grow rampant, that is the government’s prime opportunity to teach and to inform. Instead, they may say a few ambiguous or seemingly unsubstantiated words (at best), but for the most part they remain silent. It’s insulting.  And silence breeds chatter. It breeds table talk.

Instead of tamping out the few sparks and flames of misinformation igniting all over the east, they provided silent conditions for the fires to grow. To make matters worse, their silence breeds conspiracy theories. Once they lose the professional lead over one of the most interesting, charismatic, and controversial creatures out there, new players begin to be the voice. Instead of providing sound science based on documentation and evidence, these new players provide conjecture, speculation, embellishment, and opinion.

State and federal agencies have a chance to be the lead voice. In fact, they need to be the lead voice regardless of how controversial the animal may be. Sure they dedicated their lives to animals, but that doesn’t mean they have the luxury of ignoring people. If they continue as they have been, the masses have little choice but to follow the misinformed. That, my friend, is a scary day because, without a doubt, both people and wildlife will be scorched by the raging fires.