1. Since the 1970s, most states have treated cougars as game animals instead of ‘varmints’ to be shot on sight.

2. Thanks to modern game management, deer and elk herds (primary cougar prey) throughout the USA are at optimal numbers. In fact in some areas, deer have become pests there are so many.

3. A lot of forested areas that were denuded between 1890 and 1930, especially in the Midwest, have recovered.

4. Cougars have a wide range. Tagged individuals have moved as much as 700 miles in a straight line (more or less).

All this adds up to more cougars and when the local habitat reaches carrying capacity, some of the animals have to move to establish new territory.

Here is a link to the Cougar Network.

This is a site operated by cougar biologists and they explain in more detail what is occurring with cougars and maps that detail all verified sightings of cougars outside their “established range” since 1990. Many will find it surprising where these animals are turning up. Another 10 years or so will tell how successful the animals will be in re-colonizing their former range.

Black panthers are always leopards (Africa/Asia) or jaguars (Mexico/South America). There is no known case of melanism in cougars. However a cougar in poor light may appear very dark. My stomping grounds in Missouri and Arkansas were ripe with black panther stories and livestock supposedly killed by them. However in 40 years of tramping about the woods, I’ve yet to see the physical proof of the “black panthers.” However, we have lots of physical proof of bobcats and now proof of wild cougars (and I saw one myself two years ago) where black panthers had supposedly been roaming for all these years.

To know what really killed the sheep in Maine would take an autopsy. Coyotes now range into Maine and livestock death blamed on big cats often turns out to be feral dogs, or even the local pet dogs. If you say there is a big bobcat in the woods I’ll buy it. If you tell me there is a cougar in the woods, I just might buy it. But black panthers? I want to see it before I put my money down.

But do keep your eyes open in the woods. Even our “extinct” Ivory-Billed Woodpecker has resurfaced.

These cryptids, the mystery cats of North America, are, more often than not, described as “black panthers.” Generally, one thinks of the melanistic leopard of Africa and Asia as the black panther, but it is the puma of the New World that is the skeptic’s usual flesh and blood rebuttal to these accounts of large, black cats. To confuse matters even further, “panther” is a term synonymous with mountain lion, puma, cougar, or painter; all supposedly denote, at least in North America, the same animal, a tawny (not a black) felid.

Why some of these mystery cats are melanistic or reported to be black, is, well, a mystery.

One reason I write books, of course, is to be able to stretch my legs when sharing info on topics like this. I’ve devoted over 60 pages in my new, revised Mysterious America to this whole question of “Black Panther” sightings in the Americas. Clearly, trying to capture the idea and process of what might be happening with Black Panthers cannot be done in one comment. But in general, no one really knows until we catch one.