Virginia is right next door to Kentucky. I live about 30 miles from the Virginia border, and along that Kentucky/Virginia border are the deepest canyons in the East. Virginia has lots of wild country that is terrific puma habitat - big mountains cut by deep gorges, lots of forest, and a large population of whitetail deer. I believe the pumas are here, but there are probably not a lot of them, and they are very secretive. Sooner or later, someone will get a trailcam photo or one will be killed on the highway or something, confirming their existence. This has already happened in Kentucky - the puma kitten that was killed was in Floyd County. Floyd County, Kentucky, is very near the Virginia border. If pumas can be living wild there, there’s no reason to believe that they are not also living wild in Virginia.

I doubt that pumas are emigrating from Florida though. There aren’t really very many Florida panthers, and they are still dispersing into Florida. They’re a different subspecies than the Eastern puma too, although that would not be much of an inhibition to them moving northward, if the Florida population ever becomes large.

I think that most of the pumas here in the East, especially those living in the Appalachians, are Eastern pumas that have been here all along; they were never completely exterminated. There are some escaped or released former captive cats too, and probably also a few dispersals from the western areas.

That having been said, I also believe that by far the majority of “puma sightings” in the East are misidentifications. I can see how someone could mistake a Lab or other big dog for a puma, if they only saw it briefly and they aren’t really familiar with animals. Shucks, I’ve had people tell me that they saw a black panther on my property, after they saw my black cat, Halloween, out on the hillside. But there are many people who have seen pumas, or evidence of puma activity, who know what they are talking about.

On topic, speaking as the person who found the track that the state biologists determined was “inconclusive”–it was four inches across with four distinct toes and no claw marks, if it wasn’t a cougar I want to know just what the heck was in my driveway–I just want to say “Thank you, Loren.”

When I heard that a reporter from the AP was coming into town to do a story on the cougar sightings I was afraid that the end result would be insulting and derogatory because the minds of our state officials seem set in stone.

It was so nice to come onto Cyrptomundo to catch up with the latest cryptid news and find your comments. Yes, most people in town are familiar with local fauna, and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone here above the age of ten who could NOT tell the difference between a cougar and a bobcat.

For every sighting that gets reported there are at least a dozen more that are only whispered about because people fear the very ridicule that was on display in that article.

The only crackpots I’ve run into during the last 43 years of cougar & black panther field studies are state & federal wildlife officials who cannot distinguish differences between canine & cougar tracks & other evidence of ghost cats.

As for the USF&WS Mark McCullogh claim of “only 64 confirmed eastern cougar events since 1900″, I’d say his comment is from the biggest crackpot working for any federal wildlife agency.

Our all volunteer Eastern Puma Research Network professional staff of animal identification specialists has identified CONFIRMING evidence of cougars & mountain lions to be currently present in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Ohio, Illinois & Wisconsin.

As for the state of Michigan, retired DNR Forester Mike Zuidema along with Dr. Patrick Rusz & the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy has documented a current presence of native cougars in 11 Upper & Lower Peninsula counties since 1999.

If an animal looks like a cougar, leaves tracks of a cougar, screams like a cougar & is caught on film in a cougar suit, what other animal could that feline be, but a COUGAR!!!!!

Now I’m going to wait & see what official wildlife crackpots from state or federal wildlife agencies or the other eastern cougar groups want to debate me on this issue..

Since our appearance on the History Channel’s Monster Quest Program discussing cougars & black panthers, we have received an assortment of internal memos from various state agencies where field officers talk over the subject during lunchbreaks.

Dozens of professional wildlife biologists have told us to keep pursuing the subject, since we are very close to the truth on a continued presence of wild, native cougars in eastern North America.

Pure science says this: the Eastern cougar is a slam dunk. Of course they’re going to get there, any way they can, just like the coyote did, just like people shut up behind the Iron Curtain risked their lives to get to the West. Who wouldn’t want to go where the easy living is?

One little thing has gotten lost during our long romance with the wild wild wild West. Most of it is a DESERT, literally, but practically all of it is by comparison to the East, some of the finest wildlife habitat in the global temperate zone. The mountain lion’s ideal prey - deer - inhabit the East in numbers incomprehensible to Westerners. Not only that, but practically all of the East offers cover! (Not only that, but most of the livestock raising in North America happens EAST of the Mississippi.) There’s more forest here now than Washington’s generation saw, and although it is being threatened anew by our idiotic taste for more more more - more big box stores; more square footage per person; more screens in more theatres, more built space that is built to be nothing but space - it is still coming back strong. And so are the animals. The moose is all over New England; you can’t hike in Shenandoah National Park anymore without tripping over a mother bear with four cubs; I’m seeing buck whitetails GRAZING ALONG ROADWAYS for the first time in my life, guns be damned, because they know they won’t get shot in the suburbs, in broad daylight. It’s a smorgasbord, here in God’s country, and the mountain lions can smell it from the arid buttes.

If they ever left - if the coyote ever left - they were coming back, as soon as we let them. Well, we’re a century into letting them now. Why are professional wildlife people in denial about this?

The pure scientist in them isn’t. The politician/bureaucrat in them? That’s what is.

I guess science thinks of itself and having all of the answers. Just THEM. Like Dwa, I think we need to put more faith in people.

“Additionally, I’d bet than any of these animal control officers, biologists, or game managers would LOVE to be the guy to finally get a picture, or a sighting themselves of the REAL thing, because they think this stuff is really fascinating! After all they have devoted their lives studying this stuff, right? My two cents. Anyone else?”

Well, there’s me, and I think that if anyone thought this was really that fascinating, they’d have more of an open mind on the subject than these supposedly professional wildlife people do.

I live right next door to Virginia and I can tell you that people are seeing cougars - that’s cougars, the real animal - in Virginia. And in my state, and in the others that border Virginia. Period. Maybe the pros are frustrated because they think they should be the ones having the fun? I don’t know.

“But experts say those are isolated incidents” translates into plain English as “but experts like to fire from the hip, so they can sound like experts.”

Personally, I’m willing to trust what people with two good eyes say they saw - particularly when they are of that segment of the population that does know the local fauna - over what desk pilots say those people saw. Those desk pilots are displaying an incuriosity of the sort that never, ever, ceases to amaze me. How do You, O Desk Jockey, know precisely what that lady saw? Were you there? One would think these guys would like a bit of spice in their lives. If there is anything more plausible - that we don’t officially know, that is - than the Eastern cougar, I’d love to know what it is. What is so impossible about this?

Loren’s theme is spot on. Until we get to the point that we put a little more thought into the observations of everyday people doing what humans do best - living by the evidence of their eyes - we aren’t going to get anywhere with cryptids. This is precisely what the word “ethnoknown” means.

The eastern cougar is ethnoknown.

Science can catch up any century it comes around to wanting to.

We’re not talking about sea serpents or grizzly bears here, just basic animals like opossum, raccoons or armadillos. It is truly surprising (and dismaying) to learn that many people could not tell you what animal they have seen, or which one is which, when it’s sitting in a trap in front of them.

What I’ve come to understand is that an alarming amount of people are not going to give you a good description of what they have seen. I don’t think they are idiots or fools, just people who are not used to making a detailed morphological classification in a brief time frame with no warning.

There are many people who have the luxury to be paid for spending time out in the wilderness with the zoological background, observational skills,and technology to capture that shred of evidence, when they say they have not found evidence, I put more faith in them, as opposed to an 81 year old woman who saw some animal with a long tail run through her yard.

Additionally, I’d bet than any of these animal control officers, biologists, or game managers would LOVE to be the guy to finally get a picture, or a sighting themselves of the REAL thing, because they think this stuff is really fascinating! After all they have devoted their lives studying this stuff, right? My two cents.

Anyone else?

Pierre SD is 793 miles from Chicago. There are cougars in the Ocala National Forest in FL. The distance between nearby (to Ocala) Palatka FL and Blackstone VA is 616 miles. It seems reasonable to me, then, that one or more cougars could travel between Florida and Virginia. Just because none have been captured on any trail cam is no good reason to discount their presence, in my view.

And even if some sightings of cougars could be attributed to escaped “pets,” that would not change the fact that someone sighting such an animal gave an accurate report of what they saw.

This automatic, knee-jerk debunking is so tiresome!