Cougar, Puma, Mountain Lion, Catamount, Panther.. call it what you want, but they are at the Mississippi River and moving east!

Hard not to love a Mountain Lion.. for one, they eat people on occasion.. puts a little legitimate stress back in life.. something to worry about other than that text you haven't received yet..
The official line from various state agencies and the US Department of Interior is that they haven't moved east of the Mississippi River, with the exception of the isolated Florida Panther with one or two famous exceptions:
http://www.ct.gov/deep/lib/deep/press_releases/2011/2011-07-26_mtnlionpresentation.pdf
I have had friends knowledgeable about the outdoors give me pretty reliable stories of sightings in Vermont, South Carolina and Tennessee. Most recently I was told of game camera photos taken of them in North West Indiana. Maybe it's just young males looking for a good time, but they are in the east, have no doubt.



My first interaction with them was in New Mexico where my college roommate, his girlfriend and I spotted a spot on huge track near Gila Hot Springs in the South West part of the state. Another time a college buddy showed up in my room needing to talk after a night hike in Colorado. He had been stalked by a Mountain Lion he was pretty sure and wanted to get the story out, which had both thrilled and disturbed him. Their population and health in the west is uncontested, but they are moving east, and if you have ever seen how deer run wild east of the Mississippi you wouldn't blame them. Often sightings are blamed on released pets, quite possible, but the move from the easternmost known wild populations in South Dakota into places like Wisconsin, and, well in the case above, Fairfield County, Connecticut, home of Martha Stuart and essentially the East Coast Version of Orange County, California, is undeniable. I might regret saying this if some 5 year old gets gobbled up while his mom tends the Bar B Q in some Jersey Suburb, but bring it on!
The lack of apex predators in the east, with the near extinction of the red wolf, displacement of the grey wolf and Mountain Lion, sparsity of the Black Bear and again extirpation of the Grizzly that did roam at least close to the Appalachians has left the easy pick'ins for deer hunters but not a health ecosystem by any measure. The White Tail deer roams with such impunity over the whole east, with so much forage from fractured edgeland woods that they are considered a nuisance in many areas, and unhealthy due to the only natural selection taking out the stronger speciments through trophy hunting. One good mountain lion could eat one or more a week, which is a nice start.

links to the controversy and latest facts:
http://www.mountainlion.org/cal_ch3.asp
http://www.mountainlion.org/featurearticleeastwardho.asp
http://www.strangeark.com/nabr/NABR7.pdf
These Guys, the Eastern Cougar Foundation, appear to be a pugnacious group who are actively trying to put together a picture of where the natural reintroductions, migrations perhaps, are happening and could happen:
http://www.easterncougar.org/index.htm
There are now websites that focus on aggregating sightings. It's a veritable feline Where's Waldo? This is a good one for the State of Michigan:
http://savethecougar.org/
Another for Connecticut, including a sighting near Sandy Hook just before the now infamous school shooting:
http://ctmountainlion.org/
Western TN:
https://www.uu.edu/forms/cougars/sightings.cfm
One for central New York State which is using mapping as well:
http://www.trackincats.com/mapslash.php
I noticed more for Virginia, and a few other places, and a number of State Environmental Departments with reporting sites. The Motivation of State officials for not reporting can be complex. some might not want to cause a panic, which could harm the animals they might secretly want to see naturally reintroduced. Others might be too strapped to want to deal with it, and some might want to not muddy the waters and just collect data and let their various leaders and law makers make the decisions. The Federal Government, as well as all state governments, are always dealing with Legislation surrounding these things, including the Endangered Species Act, and that can start a lot of requirements with just one spotted breeding pair under certain classifications for a species. IT call can be quite controversial, tie peoples hands, and if a department or specific agent or biologist is sympathetic, he might find his best course of action is to say and do nothing. Also, if the department is not sympathetic when it comes to meeting those requirements, the same is true. The Eastern Cougar, a subspecies distinguished by not much perhaps, was declared extinct by the USD of I in just 2011, and this move might have meant a few things: There is no difference between the two, and we know the western cougar is going to refill this land, and rather than try to chase animals that can move thousands of miles all over the place, let's not turn that into an ESA issue. This is the Logic I am projecting and assuming.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/science/earth/03cougar.html?_r=0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_cougar

In regards to say the resettling of the Elk in the East, a similar story, and something I wrote about in another post with glee, although all extirpations are sad, bad for the environment due to the way they allow populations to get out of blance with the carying capacity of the land, the timing of these two could be seen as fortuitous, because a settled Eastern Mountain Lion population would definitely have put some wrinkles in this effort, the same as a settled Wolf Population would have.. in this case, introducing the elk, letting their populations grow and become healthy, then adding the other predators should the political will ever be there, is the smart way to go, and the way things appear to be happening both with and without man's help. The mistakes of the Red Wolf Wolf Reintroduction to Smokey Mountain National Park and the lack of suitable game for them is present in the minds of all east coast biologists and conservationists. I wrote about that effort as well here.
There was a website I was trying to find that attempted to aggregate Sightings from all over the East, ah, here it is:
http://www.cougarnet.org/
but that appears to no longer be a moot point..they're heeee're!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVC2vyVCWJI