Zach Howard PlanetArk 3 Mar 11;
The eastern cougar, a large and elusive tawny wild cat that once prowled over wilderness in 21 states, is now extinct, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said on Wednesday.
Experts had long questioned the cougar's existence. Though it has been on the endangered species list since 1973, the animal likely has been extinct since the 1930's, said Dr. Mark McCollough, a senior scientist with the FWS.
Federal researchers had been studying whether the eastern cougar was present in the 21 states where it had a historical range.
"(Researchers) found no information to support the existence of the eastern cougar," said Martin Miller, the FWS Northeast head of endangered species.
The federal agency said individual sightings of cougars in the wild in recent years actually matched other subspecies, including South American cats that had either escaped from captivity or were released to the wilderness as well as wild cougars from Western states that had migrated east.
The eastern cougar also is known as a puma, panther, catamount, painter or mountain lion depending upon its habitat, according to the Cougar Rewilding Foundation, a non-profit organization devoted to raising public awareness of eastern cougars.
Since the charity's inception in 1998, years of field work to try to verify eastern cougar sightings have failed to produce a single confirmation, the group said on its website.
Now, the Fish and Wildlife agency is readying a proposal to remove the eastern cougar from the endangered species list, since extinct animals are not eligible for protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.
The move does not affect the endangered status of other wild cat subspecies, including the Florida panther. That panther now exists in less than 5 percent of its historic habitat throughout the Southeast. It currently has only one breeding population of 120 to 160 animals in southwestern Florida, the FWS said.
(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Jerry Norton)
US declares eastern cougar extinct
Yahoo News 3 Mar 11;
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Fish and Wildlife Service declared the eastern cougar officially extinct Wednesday, even though the big cat is believe to have first disappeared in the 1930s.
The eastern cougar is often called the "ghost cat" because it has been so rarely glimpsed in northeastern states in recent decades. It was first placed on the endangered species list in 1973.
"The US Fish and Wildlife Service conducted a formal review of the available information and... concludes the eastern cougar is extinct and recommends the subspecies be removed from the endangered species list," a statement said.
"Only western cougars still live in large enough numbers to maintain breeding populations, and they live on wild lands in the western United States and Canada."
The US agency asked for input about the eastern cougar, and determined from the 573 responses it received that any sightings in the area were actually of other types of cougars.
Of the 21 states in the historical range of the cats, "no states expressed a belief in the existence of an eastern cougar population," it said.
The service's lead scientist for the eastern cougar, Mark McCollough, said the animal has likely been extinct since the 1930s.
