COUGAR REWILDING'S Chris Spatz pragmatic outlook on the chances for Cougars recolonizing our Midwest and Eastern States...............As he emailed me the other day sayng: "Rick, it could take a minimum of a 100 years for Cougars to recolonize all available Midwest and East Coast habitat.....and that is an optimistic forecast......everything would have to be optimum in terms of corridors, females migrating East and core habitat availability"

----- Original Message -----
From: ctspatz@earthlink.net <ctspatz@earthlink.net>
To: Meril, Rick
Sent: Fri May 13 04:05:32 2011
Subject: Re: NPR cougar recolonization story

Rick,

I was catching up with your blog and noticed you had posted Brian Mann's cougar recolonization story on NPR's Morning Edition. I wrote to Mann after his longer piece first aired on NCPR in the 'Daks, and followed up with Morning Edition.

Unfortunately, the picture Mann paints for recolonization is far too rosy. While young dispersing males have made it as far east as the Michigan UP, fewer than a dozen females (and no kittens) have been documented east of the North Dakota Badlands, South Dakota Black Hills and Nebraska panhandle breeding populations. No females have yet made it to the Midwest. After twenty years of dispersal from the Black Hills, it wasn't until last year that a breeding population was finally established in the adjacent Nebraska panhandle. Project that progression eastward, from the Black Hills to the 'Daks (as Mann's story suggested), and we're talking decades, maybe a century, under ideal conditions.

Conditions now are far from ideal. Wyoming and South Dakota this winter halved (nearly 90 adults) the Black Hills breeding population, which means fewer dispersers running the open season gauntlet on the eastern prairies. Missouri and Arkansas have already ruled out encouraging breeding populations. That leaves Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan as the only viable route through Ontario into the Adirondacks (at least in the States). When the eastern cougar is officially federally delisted, Midwestern states considered part of the eastern cougar's former range (Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio) will lose federal protection status. It will be up to the states to determine whether or not to protect recolonizing cats and to support any breeding.


If they go the way of Missouri and Arkansas, kiss recolonization good-bye. If it's a patchwork of protected states, well, it's anyone's guess how far cougars will make it, if breeding will ever be established in the Midwest, let alone further east. That's why it is imperative for conservation organizations who care about cougar recolonization to begin advocating for state protections in the Midwest.

Chris