Famed Jaguar Biolobgist Alan Rabinowitz feels that it is very possible that New England and New York have a small breeding population of Cougars whose origens were probably released pets .........While our friend Mark McCollough at USFW did declare the Cougar extinct East of the Mississippi a few months back, so many of us are hoping that somehow some of our secretive BIG CATS somehow are living in "the shadows among us"............As Rabinowitz states in the article below: "What I believe is there is a small population or small number of wild mountain lions out there, mountain lions that clearly in the past have been held in captivity, who are maintaining themselves and breeding" .......... "Being in the field of cat conservation, I'd be hard-pressed to believe there's that many people with captive mountain lions out there"

Big-cat activist gives own theory on mountain lions

Written by

Michael Risinit

Alan Rabinowitz has spent his life chasing big cats all over the world — clouded leopards in Borneo, tigers in Myanmar and Asiatic leopards in Thailand. But the thought of their cousin in the backyards and forests of the Hudson Valley and New England is just as compelling for him as a jaguar in the jungles of Belize. "The reason I'm interested in this is I've lived in Putnam County for 17 or 18 years, and I've been hearing these stories of mountain lions for just as long," he said last week. Rabinowitz holds a Ph.D. in wildlife ecology and headed the science and exploration division of the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society for almost 30 years. He's now chief executive officer of Panthera, an international organization dedicated to protecting wild cats.

Based on his own observation of a "big cat track" in Clarence Fahnestock State Park ("It wasn't a bobcat track," he said) and the recurring reports of mountain lions in Putnam and beyond, the Mahopac expert discounts the explanation that every mountain lion supposedly wandering the wilder fringes of suburbia is a formerly captive animal. He offered his theory last week, just days after a motorist on a Connecticut highway struck and killed a mountain lion. That animal was thought to be the same one seen not far from the Westchester County Airport earlier this month. "What I believe is there is a small population or small number of wild mountain lions out there, mountain lions that clearly in the past have been held in captivity, who are maintaining themselves and breeding," he said.

It's a theory discarded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientist who led the study that, in March, declared the eastern mountain lion extinct. For Joan Twardy of Kent, though, Rabinowitz makes sense. "Unless there are an awful lot of people buying up baby mountain lion kittens, raising them, and then releasing them to the wild, I think we must be establishing a repopulation of this large cat in the Hudson Valley and surrounding area," she told The Journal News in an email.

Residents in recent years have reported big felines in Patterson, Bedford, near Harriman State Park and in Dutchess County. Twardy, a nurse, and her husband, a teacher, watched a mountain lion in their yard in December. The couple live off Nichols Street, near protected state and New York City watershed land. "My husband and I could not believe what we were seeing, but it was a completely unobstructed view, and the animal stood still for quite a while, swishing its long tail back and forth," she added. The long tail is one of the telltales of a mountain lion verus the more common (and stubby-tailed) bobcat.

Eastern mountain lions once roamed from Michigan, eastern Canada and Maine south to South Carolina and west across Tennessee. The last eastern cougar in the United States was thought to have been killed in Maine in 1938. Any mountain lions seen in the East since then are judged to be escaped or released animals. Those words were spoken by Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection Deputy Commissioner Susan Frechette in reference to the dead lion. It's also the belief of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Mark McCollough, who headed the service's eastern mountain lion review. There's no evidence of a breeding population, such as cats regularly killed by cars or hunters, caught in traps or detected by scientists studying other wildlife, he said. "It just doesn't hold up to scientific rigor, all the things you would expect to see. Here in the heavily developed Northeast, if there was a breeding population, all of that evidence would manifest itself," McCollough said.

But few animals don't act like many animals, Rabinowitz said. Animals at a low density, he said, are more wary and "don't show normal behavior."

Connecticut scientists are planning an extensive examination of the dead lion to determine its origins. Genetic samples are being sent to several labs, and chemical elements of its flesh will be analyzed to see if it was dining on cat food or deer.

Rabinowitz, though, likes his odds. "Being in the field of cat conservation, I'd be hard-pressed to believe there's that many people with captive mountain lions out there," he said. Residents in recent years have reported big felines in Patterson, Bedford, near Harriman State Park and in Dutchess County. The long tail is one of the telltales of a mountain lion verus the more common (and stubby-tailed) bobcat.