We Thought the Eastern Cougar Was Extinct — Until Real Footage Raised New Questions

The eastern cougar was officially declared extinct by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2018, with the last verified specimen dating back to 1938. Yet hundreds of sightings continue to be reported every year across New Brunswick, Maine, Nova Scotia, and the northeastern United States. Trail cameras keep capturing something moving through forests where cougars are not supposed to exist. This is the story of Rick Boucher’s Canterbury sighting, the 2003 Fundy National Park DNA evidence, and the 2,700-kilometer journey of the “St. Croix Cougar” — a lone male mountain lion that traveled from the Black Hills of South Dakota to Milford, Connecticut, before being struck and killed on the Wilbur Cross Parkway in June 2011. If the eastern cougar died out in 1938, what exactly is walking past these cameras today? SOURCES • U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — Removing the Eastern Puma From the Federal List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife (2018) • Hawley, Rego, Wydeven, Schwartz, Viner, Kays, Pilgrim, and Jenks — Long-Distance Dispersal of a Subadult Male Cougar from South Dakota to Connecticut Documented with DNA Evidence, Journal of Mammalogy (2016) • Thompson and Jenks — Dispersal Movements of Subadult Cougars from the Black Hills, Ecosphere (2010) • Morrison, Boyce, and Nielsen — Space-Use, Movement and Dispersal of Sub-Adult Cougars in a Geographically Isolated Population, PeerJ (2015) • CBC News — Reported Cougar Sighting Near Canterbury Dismissed as Clearly a Housecat (2023) • Michigan Department of Natural Resources — Confirmed Cougar Sightings • Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources — Cougars in Wisconsin • Adirondack Almanack — No Evidence of Native Cougars in the Adirondacks • Star Tribune — A Glance at Several Confirmed Cougar Sightings in Minnesota MUSIC “Artemis” by Scott Buckley Released under CC BY 4.0 www.scottbuckley.com.au “Within Our Nature” by Scott Buckley Released under CC BY 4.0 www.scottbuckley.com.au “Horizons” by Scott Buckley Released under CC BY 4.0 www.scottbuckley.com.au