This is like how Pennsylvania Game keeps insisting there are no mountain lions in PA, even when I called to report one sitting on my lawn.
Any pictures? “That’s just a housecat, misidentified all the time”
Meanwhile there is a known family of them living in Jersey about 20 minutes from my house.
A colleague of mine claims to be friends with some game officials. He also claims that they will privately acknowledge that there’s a small native population of cougars in areas south and east of the Great Lakes. They are strongly dis-incentivized to acknowledge this publicly for a number of reasons.
- Cougars in Ohio? That probably means that they’re some sort of sub-species with endangered status.
- Scary for locals? Sure. But the odds of an attack on human by a privacy-liking predator (who have plenty of tasty deer to eat) are vanishingly small.
Basically, it just means a lot of paperwork and hassle for them with little to no positive effect.
In the unlikely event one is killed and the carcass can’t be denied, it’s always a “rogue male who wandered out of their native habitat in the UP or Canada somewhere.” (Somehow swimming solo across lakes Michigan and Eerie, or maybe hitching a ride on a ferryboat seems more reasonable than the obvious conclusion that there is a small breeding population).
ETA - On one hiking trip in Ohio we found a deer’s spine and pelvis up in a tree, about 8 feet off the ground. Maybe a human put it there, but I can’t think of any animal (that’s supposed to be here) that would have. Weird shit.
Cartel pet got loose?
They refuse to disclose the mountain range… Umm, OK. As long as that guy is liable for any attacks.
