As always.

I tend to agree with SHUMWAY10973.

I think ultimately the authorities are afraid of panic—people freaking out. Like was said above.

We get cougars all the time in Reno coming down from the Sierra Nevada’s.

put it this way: if they say, ‘yeah, it MIGHT be out there, alright’ and don’t take any action or enough action to capture such a ‘public menace’?

then what happens if a kid is attacked a few weeks later?

litiginous lawyers (an oxymoron if ever there was one!) chase the ambulance back to the city’s doorsteps and file against the city, listing them as having ‘abdicated their civic responsibility’ and directly having ‘contributed to gross incompetence,’ etc.

all of which means: the city pays out a LOT more if and when such an unfortunate incident ever did occur.

if, on the other hand, the city denies the reality? well, if the rare event happens and an attack occurs? they just put a few ‘experts’ on the stand to say, ‘hey, you know, the odds were a million to one that this animal even existed!’

sure, the suing lawyer might put on a few cryptozoologists to argue the point, but guess what? they’ll soon be discredited and/or attempted to be so by various specialists without the baggage of ‘bigfoot’ etc.

such experts will defend the city, saying in essence, ‘hey, why should the city spend tens of thousands of dollars going after an unlikely specimen when there are known predators like ________ (fill in with locally known dangers) in an era of underfunded management?’

this argument not only will sway most juries, but make them less likely to decide for the injured for larger settlements.

in short, it boils down to money. it’s cheaper to deny and save the dough for hiring expert biologists and defense counsel than admitting it and having to take on the liability from a legal point of view.

i’m not advocating this system, merely reflecting that, like the above comments, it’s ‘reality’ instead of ‘what should be.’

Huh?

A “very large territory” can easily include areas in close proximity to an urban population. Ask the urban populations of cities like Boulder, CO, or LA. (Or, heh heh, Chicago.)

Wildlife guys are supposed to know this kind of stuff.

There seems to be strong and growing evidence that wild mountain lions are expanding their range east, just like the coyote did, to take advantage of a large and growing source of favored prey. There is simply no longer any reason to tell someone he/she saw a house cat. Particularly when the description the sighter gave says, no, she didn’t.

One really wonders why wildlife agencies see things like this as a headache. Things like this should be what gets them up in the morning!

Maybe we need to make the heads of state wildlife agencies elected positions subject to recall. Or maybe not. But boy we need to do something about the cobwebs in those offices. Exciting news about wildlife should, well, EXCITE wildlife people.