Wisconsin Cougar Confirmed
Posted by: Loren Coleman on March 13th, 2009
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has confirmed that they’ve seen a mountain lion in Burnett County, just west of Spooner, last week. Photographs, clear ones, were taken.
After being contacted by a hunter, a group of DNR biologists tracked and treed the animal on Wednesday, March 4th.
They were unable to capture it without hurting it, but they plan to keep on trying. If captured, they plan to put a radio tracking collar around it’s neck and release it unharmed, back into the wild. They will also do a DNA test to determine it’s origin.
Another picture of a cougar treed in Washburn County last week shows it kept its eyes on DNR personnel, who failed in attempts to tranquilize it and put on a radio collar. It was the second confirmed sighting of the species in Wisconsin recently.
The last known wild mountain lions in Wisconsin disappeared in the early 1900s.
A very detailed article on the recent Wisconsin incidents can be found here.
- Similar Phenomena:
It doesn’t surprise me at the Minnesota Zoo they have mountain lions in the native species section of the zoo and with all the reports of them popping up out east I don’t see why they wouldn’t be in WI too, I actually didn’t know they weren’t supposed to be in the wild in WI anymore to be honest.
Mid western Indiana, about an hour from my home, has also had some recent sitings.
Cougar sightings near school cancels recess
Let’s hope the outcome is much better than the Arizona jaguar tragedy.
I’m happy the cougar is back ANYWHERE.
This latest picture of a Wisconsin cougar doesn’t come as any surprise to the Eastern Puma Research Network.
In August 2004, a trail camera set out by a retired Wisconsin DNR officier to “catch a suspected cougar several people had seen in Morris Township of Shawano County” accomplished its goal.
Confirmed evidence of yet another puma was caught on film near Burlington in early May 2008.
Neither of these photos were acknowledged by Wisconsin DNR, whose officials didn’t want the public to know about them, since trained observers were the witnessess.
They finally admit it. My family here in Wisconsin has been seeing them for years. One of my dad’s friends had a photo he took less than ten feet away of a black panther but weird guys came and took them and said they don’t exist. Everyone around here already knew they did.