Bit of a non-story - genetic evidence has shown that the Eastern and Western (and Florida) Pumas are all just one subspecies. Oh, and note that the linked story is from 2009, ten years ago!
Yes, it is so terribly sad ....... :-CGod that's sad
Yep, that's true, though natural recolonisation is occurring slowly, by animals moving in from the west, and/or escaped 'pets'.Even if were one subspecies, an entire population of this cat has been lost - hardly a non-story.
It said '2009' at the top of the page on the link (can't double-check; Chosun's link isn't working just now).Additionally, the news itself is not from ten years ago - though the cats have been thought extinct for a long period, the move by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is just a couple of weeks ago (here)
How bizarre! the link to the original blog post has disappeared and a quick search through the site couldn't reveal the article.......It said '2009' at the top of the page on the link (can't double-check; Chosun's link isn't working just now).
Eastern cougars—also known as “ghost cats,” catamounts, panthers and, of course, mountain lions — disappeared after decades of overhunting on multiple fronts. The large predators were seen as threats to livestock, which resulted in the cats being actively hunted and bounties placed on their heads.
On top of that, the cats also ran out of their primary prey, deer, which were themselves hunted into near-extinction. “White-tailed deer were nearly eradicated from the eastern U.S. in the late 1800s,” Service biologist Mark McCollough told me in 2011. “The few cougars that survived [after that] would have had very little food to support them.”
From the very same Scientific American blog (https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...eastern-cougar-officially-declared-extinct/):
Thus, it seems guns, and idiots holding them, are to blame here, after all.
Guns surely knocked the cougars down, but cars are evidently the real threat today.
Guns surely knocked the cougars down, but cars are evidently the real threat today.
Habitat is there, prey is super abundant, with White Tail Deer a plague on the landscape, hunters are declining and well aware of the law, yet no cougars in the wild. The last one I saw was dead along the freeway between LA and San Diego, beautiful animal at odds with our car culture.