A new friend of this blog, Dr. Richard Lanman resides in California, practices medicine and has an active avocation educating Californians(and many friends and neighbors across the globe) about our native wild Cats through entries on Wikepedia.............Dr. Rick provided me with some insight on the correct and most currently accepted nomenclature our Puma(variously known as Mountain Lion, Cougar, Catamount, etc),,,,,which is PUMA CONCOLOR(common name Puma), not the previous name of felix concolor(common name Cougar and/or Mountain Lion)...................Also note and please read Dr. Rick's fine Jaguar Wikepedia entry at very bottom of blog entry below........Our largest cat, the Jaguar, did indeed occupy Florida as far North as West Virginia and the Ohio Valley,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,across our Souther tier through Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and as far West as Monterey, California

Forwarded message ----------From: Richard Lanman <ricklanman@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 3:44 PM
Subject: Fwd: Is Puma the preferred common name of Puma concolor?
To: Rick Meril <rick.meril@gmail.com>

Rick, Dr. Wilson used cougar in his taxonomic Mammals of North America first edition but here you see him changing to puma post the 2007 genetic work. This is the 2nd and only other authority I contacted, fyi, and thanks much for your help on Schmidt's WOLF! article. I'll certainly copy you if I can get it!

Best,

RIck

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Wilson, Don
Date: Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 3:01 AM
Subject: RE: Is Puma the preferred common name of Puma concolor?
To: Richard Lanman <ricklanman@gmail.com>

Hi Rick,

I think you are correct, and I do concur with using puma as the common name. I think Warren is correct in his reasoning, and it makes sense to me to change from cougar to puma. We used puma in Vol. 1 of the "Handbook of Mammals of the World". Have a look at http://www.lynxeds.com/catalog/hmw for info on this series.

Good work on wikipedia,

Don
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________________________________________
From: Richard Lanman [ricklanman@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, December 18, 2011 11:52 PM
To: Wilson, Don
Subject: Fwd: Is Puma the preferred common name of Puma concolor?

Dr. Wilson,

It appears to me that "puma" is now the predominate common name for Puma concolor in the published journal articles I read about Puma concolor. I emailed Dr. Warren Johnson below (he authored the two attached articles in 2006 and 2007) but I wanted to get your opinion. If you concur then I will change the current wikipedia heading which is "Cougar" for Puma concolor to "Puma", but I don't want to mis-step.

Thanks for your help.

Best,

Rick

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---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Warren Johnson <warjohns@mail.nih.gov<mailto:warjohns@mail.nih.gov>>
Date: Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 4:31 AM
Subject: Re: Is Puma the preferred common name of Puma concolor?

To: Richard Lanman <ricklanman@gmail.com<mailto:ricklanman@gmail.com>>


Hi,
I will take a look soon at the wiki page, but first:
I invariably say puma, and am increasingly hearing puma used. However, it tends to vary significantly by region so it will probably be difficult to find an "official" common name that everyone will feel comfortable saying. Personally, puma is probably more broadly used and better reflects the evolutionary history (it is certainly not a "lion").
Warren

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On Dec 13, 2011, at 2:15 AM, Richard Lanman wrote:

Congrats on your incredible Sci Am pub in 2007, by the way. I am very excited about the Jaguar finds in southern Arizona recently and use wikipedia to educate the public as best I can. You might enjoy some work I assembled on the historic range of jaguar in the U.S. which begins with Thomas Jefferson's report in 1799. I'd be curious what you think. See the section on the Jaguar page entitled Jaguar in the United States at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar#Jaguar_in_the_United_States

My main purpose for emailing you, however, is to find a reference that the preferred common name for Puma concolor, at least in the scientific literature, is now "puma", not cougar or mountain lion. In wikipedia it's cougar but I think this is now more properly puma, no?

Thanks for your help.

--
Best,

Rick Lanman MD, Founder
Institute for Historical Ecology
Los Altos, CA

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Dr. Warren Johnson
Laboratory of Genomic Diversity
National Cancer Institute
Frederick, Maryland
USA

Best,

Rick Lanman MD
Los Altos, CA

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom."
- Thomas Paine

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On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 3:06 PM, Rick Meril <rick.meril@gmail.com> wrote:

Rick.............Happy New Year and thanks for reading the blog............I will take your suggestion on using PUMA as the common name............and as you say, a Puma is a Puma is a Puma anywhere found in North America off of the latest genetics

760-765-0030 this is the number of the California Wolf Center and they have cited the Schmidt 1987 article on their website....................try them..............if you get hold of the article, would you share with me please.

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On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 1:07 PM, Richard Lanman <ricklanman@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Rick,

Just found your blog and posted on your facebook Wolves, Coyotes and Cougars. I'm trying to get a pdf of Robert H. Schmidt's article "Historical Records of Gray Wolves in California" in WOLF! 1987. I emailed Schmidt himself and he says he's not sure how to get one. Do you know?

I use wikipedia to educate people on California wildlife, such as the recent entry of OR7 into California.

Also please consider using the common name "puma" instead of "cougar" for Puma concolor. Since the genetic studies came out in 2006 and 2007, puma is now being accepted as the common name. Easterners use cougar and westerners use mountain lion, but the puma does not roar and is not a lion (genus is not Panthera). Does this make sense?

--
Best,

Rick Lanman MD
Los Altos, CA

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Jaguar in the United States-----Wikepedia entry by Dr. Richard Lanmans

The only cat native to North America that roars,^[73] the jaguar was first observed and recorded in the United States by Thomas Jefferson in 1799. Jefferson's zoological report included jaguar in the fauna of the Ohio River Valley portion of West Virginia. There are multiple zoological reports of jaguar in California, two as far north as Monterey in 1814 (Langsdorff) and 1826 (Beechey).^[74] The coastal Diegueño (Kumeyaay people) of San Diego and Cahuilla Indians of Palm Springs had words for jaguar and the cats persisted there until about 1860.^[75]

The only recorded description of an active jaguar den with breeding adults and kittens in the U.S. was in the Tehachapi Mountains of California prior to 1860.^[74] In 1843, Rufus Sage, an explorer and experienced observer recorded jaguar present on the headwaters of the North Platte River 30–50 miles north of Long's Peak in Colorado. Cabot's 1544 map has a drawing of jaguar ranging over the Pennsylvania and Ohio valleys. Historically, the jaguar was recorded in far eastern Texas, and the northern parts of Arizona and New Mexico. However, since the 1940s, the jaguar has been limited to the southern parts of these states. Although less reliable than zoological records, native American artefacts with possible jaguar motifs range from the Pacific Northwest to Pennsylvania and Florida.

^[76]
Jaguars were rapidly eliminated by Anglo-Americans in the United States, along with most other large predators. The last female jaguar in the United States was shot by a hunter in Arizona's White Mountains in 1963. In 1969, Arizona outlawed most jaguar hunting, but with no females known to be at large, there was little hope the population could rebound. During the next 25 years, only two jaguars were documented in the United States, both killed: a large male shot in 1971 near the Santa Cruz River by two teenage duck hunters, and another male cornered by hounds in the Dos Cabezas Mountains in 1986. Then in 1996, Warner Glenn, a rancher and hunting guide from Douglas, Arizona, came across a jaguar in the Peloncillo Mountains and became a jaguar researcher, placing webcams which recorded four more Arizona jaguars.^[77]

On November 19, 2011, a 200-pound male jaguar was photographed near Cochise in southern Arizona by a hunter after being treed by his dogs (the animal left the scene unharmed). This is the last jaguar seen since another male, named "Macho B", died shortly after being radio-collared by Arizona Game and Fish Department (AGFD) officials in March, 2009. In the Macho B incident, a former AGFD subcontractor pleaded guilty to violating the endangered species act for trapping the cat and a Game and Fish employee was fired for lying to federal investigators.<sup>[

73]</sup> None of the other four male jaguars sighted in Arizona in the last 15 years have been seen since 2006.^[78] However, a second 2011 sighting of an Arizona jaguar was reported by a Homeland Security border pilot in June 2011, and conservation researchers sighted two jaguars within 30 miles of the Mexico/U.S. border in 2010.^[73]

Legal action by the Center for Biological Diversity led to federal listing of the cat on the endangered species list in 1997. However, on January 7, 2008, George W. Bush appointee H. Dale Hall, Director of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, signed a recommendation to abandon jaguar recovery as a federal goal under the Endangered Species Act. Critics, including the Center of Biological

Diversity and New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, were concerned that the jaguar was being sacrificed for the government's new border fence, which is to be built along many of the cat's typical crossings between the United States and Mexico.^[79] In 2010, the Obama Administration reversed the Bush Administration policy and pledged to protect "critical habitat" and draft a recovery plan for the species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is under a court order to develop a jaguar recovery plan and designate critical habitat for the cats.^[73]