Poignant and emotive picture of a young mountain lion in Wyoming gets my juices flowing

Wyoming is the 10th largest state in the United States but it has a tiny human population at just under 600,000 people. This is about one-tenth of the population of Colorado, regarded as a similar state.

Turning to this photograph, which I really like, I think the lack of humans in Wyoming comes into its own with respect to the mountain lion and other wildlife.

A young mountain lion pads across a deck overlooking Star Valley in November 2023. (Marti Halverson)

This photograph taken I believe with an iPhone which I also think is relevant because the quality is excellent for a phone camera, shows that wide-open space of Wyoming with a sprawled out human settlement.

It is unsurprising to me that this sub-adult puma has meandered onto the decking of a house overlooking the valley. No doubt this extended and dispersed human settlement is on mountain lion territory.

It is not uncommon for humans to build properties on the home ranges of mountain lions which is going to lead to human-puma conflict.

Fortunately, there was no conflict in this instance. The property owner Marti Halverson called up a local houndsman and asked them to bring a dog to encourage the mountain lion to disappear up the valley which they kindly did.

Apparently the young puma's mother was nearby. Last summer she was photographed with her adult female cubs but this time the mother was alone. It appears that the kids had grown up and this young mountain lion was exploring, learning to be independent. She had just been weaned I expect.

It can be a dangerous time especially for male mountain lions who have to find their home range sometimes huge distances from their natal range. And they can be harmed in that discovery and journey to their new home. They can be harmed by hunters or other mountain lions i.e. resident mountain lions who want to protect their home range.

What I like about this photograph is that it really highlights beautifully how the mountain lion fits in with the human-made environment in a state where nature still has the upper hand. Where the mountain lion can roam I suspect pretty freely but there is this ever present human danger.

This young mountain lion doesn't know about that danger. They don't understand how dangerous humans can be and simply finds this house interesting to explore. And behind, as mentioned, we have this beautiful vista of this wide valley and in the distance the mountains.

To people in Europe, who live in high density population places, this kind of wide-open vista with plenty of space is a breath of fresh air. To me it looks wonderful. I think I would like to live in this home and I would have loved to have photographed this beautiful mountain line. I wish her well in her life's journey.

A great danger for her will be humans with rifles and dogs because hunting mountain lion hunting is allowed in the state of Wyoming. They can be hunted with all legal firearms and archery equipment. That's her danger. I wish it wasn't the case. I can't tell you how much I hate hunters and the hunting of beautiful wild animals for the pleasure; for the fun of it. It doesn't add up to me at all.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

What is the native American word for 'panther'?

Realistically, you can't answer the question in the title. I will tell you why. There are hundreds of different Native American tribes and languages. The native-languages.org website lists the most popular Native American languages of which there are 30. 

These are the most popular but, as mentioned, there are far more. It is simply impractical and I would suggest impossible to find out how these Native Americans used or still do refer to the mountain lion in their own language.

Image: MikeB

I'm going to presume that the word "panther" in this context is a reference to the mountain lion which is better described as the "puma". This is the most scientific term.

The puma has the most names in any case, not including Native American languages, of all the wild cat species. This is a very complicated picture.

Let's take one of the native languages of the Americas: Cree. I have selected them at random. It is spoken by more than 70,000 people across southern Canada and into Montana. It is an Algonquian language apparently. And there are five major Cree dialects. 

The Cree are Canada's largest native group with 200,000 registered members. There are dozens of self-government nations.

The most popular or commonly spoken native language is Quechua. There are approximately 8 million speakers and they live in the Andean region of South America. It is the language of the Inca empire of Peru.

Interestingly, the official name of the mountain lion, as mentioned, the puma, is a word which comes from the Quechua language.

The name puma first appeared in 1609 when Garcilasso de la Vega, the son of a Spanish conquistador and an Incan Princess wrote, "Lions are met with, though they are not so large not so fierce as those of Africa. The Indians call them Puma." 

The AI computer ChatGPT responds to the question in the title as follows:

"The native American word for panther varies among different indigenous cultures. Some common words for panther include "puma" or "cougar" in the Americas, and "mountain lion" in some western tribes. In some Eastern tribes, it's referred to as "catamount." The exact word used for panther can also depend on the specific language and dialect of the indigenous culture."

I thought that it is wasn't very helpful 😎.

Standoff between cougars and coyotes. Pictures.

Standoff between pumas and coyotes. Photos by USFWS Mountain Prairie.

These are three of a series of photographs of two young mountain lions seeking refuge on a large wooden fence from five coyotes. You can gauge the balance of power between these species of animal from the photographs. Five coyotes trump two juvenile pumas. I guess 5 coyotes might not trump 2 adult pumas. It is all about power and authority, one over the other. Sounds like human stuff and it is.

The obvious has happened. The young cougars have used their jumping and climbing skills to distance themselves from coyotes and to seek a sanctuary.

I don't know how it was resolved. I suspect the coyotes disappeared eventually and the cougars came down.

These photographs were, in fact, published some time ago. However, I noticed this short post was languishing as a draft on the main website for some time so I think it is worthy enough to publish on this subdomain site.

Puma kills are often scavenged by other animals including: bears, pigs, wolves, bobcats, foxes and coyotes. This is despite the fact that the mountain lion can sometimes rest near their cached prey. Therefore, a scavenger risks being attacked by the mountain lion. Clearly a mountain lion can kill a coyote but in the numbers that you see in the photograph and when the mountain lion is a subadult, it is a different kettle of fish.

Do mountain lions eat coyotes?

Mountain lions eat pretty much anything that is available and their prey animals range in size from mice to moose. If an animal puts itself in a vulnerable position mountain lions will try and kill it but a mountain lion hurt and incapacitated in an attack on a prey animal will die. Therefore, they will be selective. 

Mountain lion caught in camera trap by National Park Services AP.

And if there are good alternatives to coyotes, I would suggest that they will select those animals instead. The coyote is a resourceful animal. The point I'm getting to is that the excellent reference book that I have on the prey animals that the mountain lion eats does not specify coyotes. They do specify "other carnivores" as prey animals.

I'm going to have to stick my neck out and say that mountain lions will, on occasion, eat coyotes when the opportunity arises but they will select the easiest prey they can find as a priority which will include mule deer, white-tailed deer, moose, unclassified deer, elk, livestock and so on.

There are very, very few mountain lion attacks on people in the entire history of humans' relationship with the animal and when they occur it is usually a child or a woman. A mother might be defending her cubs. They don't attack humans to eat. Americans are infinitely more likely to die of a domestic dog attack than a puma attack.

You can't keep a cougar or a tiger as a pet in Marysville, Michigan, USA

I think it's great that a city (I think we can call it a city) with about 9,600 residents can make a law (an ordinance in the USA) which bans cougars and tigers as pets. They've also banned chickens and coyotes as pets but it is the cougars and tigers which interest me more. 

Marysville. Photo in public domain.

It's hard to imagine a cougar or a tiger being a good pet but some Americans do like to live with very exotic pets. They are not that uncommon. Perhaps the best-known celebrity to have a big cat pet is Tippi Hedren, the mother of Melanie Griffith (Hedren is still alive at the date of this post - she is 91). They kept a lion called Neil in the home. He looks truly domesticated in the photographs. But I believe that wild cats never make the same sort of pet as a domestic cat.

Back to Marysville. This town is about 65 miles north-east of Detroit. The new ordinance comes into effect in mid-August. It comes after some residents complained about neighbours owning chickens and roosters who crowed. I guess they went a bit further than banning roosters and chickens. The current ordinance bans "animals or domestic fowl within the city except dogs, cats, birds, fowl, or animals commonly classified as pets".

So, they've tightened up what is and what isn't allowed to be kept as a pet. And they have decided that chickens should be regarded as livestock and they do not belong in the city but on farms in the countryside.

Comment: I'm not sure about banning chickens as pets because I've seen some very nice relationships between kids and chickens. However, I'm certain that banning tigers and mountain lions as pets is an excellent idea. Although I would doubt that there were many tigers in their community! In fact, there must be none but it's nice to take proactive steps to prevent any possibility of that happening in the future.

Green bridge for pumas traversing California's Freeway 101 will be world's biggest

NEWS AND COMMENT - LOS ANGELES, CALIF., USA: California plans to build the world's biggest animal bridge. It will traverse California's Freeway 101 which is adjacent to the Santa Monica Mountains. A conservation group is raising the $65 million to build it. It'll be called the Liberty Canyon Wildlife Crossing. It will be 65 m long and 50 m wide.

 Green bridge for pumas traversing California's Freeway 101 will be world's biggest. Image in public domain.

The bridge will have high fencing and "sound walls" which I presume means walls which absorb the sound to make the crossing more amenable to the mountain lions. I guess they need to be encouraged to use it. 

At the moment the highway divides the habitat and distribution of the mountain lion in this area of America. When you have fragmentation of the distribution of a wild cat species like this you end up with inbreeding because the population size is too small to maintain a healthy genetic diversity. This can lead to sterile males which in turn further damages the population size.

No doubt, the conservationists have recommended this bridge as a matter of urgency. It's going to be built by the California Department of Transportation and is largely funded through private donations. Apparently, there's no state budget for it. New legislation will provide for state funding of wildlife crossings such as this one in the future. To date, National Wildlife Federation has secured $38 million.

CLICK FOR A RANGE OF PAGES ON THE MOUNTAIN LION

101 Freeway carries 300,000 cars daily which presents an impenetrable barrier to mountain lions trying to cross it. When they try, they get hit by a car and killed. And to the south of the highway is the sea and to the east is Los Angeles. That's why they are trapped within this relatively small area in terms of the space required for a population of mountain lions. 

Brad Schaffer, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles said that there is a large area of open space on the other side of the freeway which leads to a very large space. The bridge will allow mountain lions to have access to that space.

In addition, the density of cars on the freeway is increasing year-on-year as there are more and more people living in the area. The trouble is that the mountain lions in this area live in a 'closed population' which is causing inbreeding, declining fertility and genetic defects. Inbreeding also reduces the immune system's effectiveness.

If they lose the mountain lion in the area it will have a cascading effect on other wildlife as this cat is the top predator. There would be more deer and overgrazing depriving smaller mammals of food. He believes that the citizens of Los Angeles are "immensely proud of these lions, of having a big carnivore right in, almost in, their midst.

That is why the bridge will be built.

What wild cats live in Florida?

Two wild cat species live in Florida: the bobcat and the Florida panther (puma, cougar, mountain lion). At one time the Florida panther was believed to be distinct subspecies of the puma but no longer. Because of the low population size of the Florida panther - in the hundreds and as low as about 100 I recall at one time - pumas from the west of the country were introduced which I understand to be an acceptance by the conservationists that they have abandoned the notion of keeping the Florida panther purebred and are just trying to save the puma from becoming extinct in Florida. It is the last place in the east of the US where it exists. The rest were hunted to extinction long ago when they were considered pests. And now they are treasured but it is too late.

Florida panther killed on the roads that criss-cross the state. Tragic but not uncommon. PHOTOGRAPH BY CARLTON WARD, JR.

It is a species of cat which is under constant pressure from human activity such as new roads and new developments. I believe that commercial organisations find the presence of the puma in Florida a nuisance and want rid of the pesky animal. I even suggested a conspiracy to get rid of it at one time.

There is talk from time to time of jaguarundi being present in Florida. There may be some but they are likely to be escaped 'pets' as the experts (IUCN Red List) say there are none.

That's about it. Back in the day there would have been ocelots but no longer. Those days are long gone as the best we can do nowadays is see fossil records of ocelots in this sunny state.

Pet puma kept in a one-roomed apartment in Moscow

MOSCOW, RUSSIA-NEWS AND VIEWS: It is reported by RT.com that the owner of a one-room apartment bought a mountain lion because he was getting bored. He lives in the south-west of Moscow. He calls the cat Hercules. We are told that the two have bonded. He likes the attention that he attracts to himself when he takes his mountain lion for a walk. 

Pet puma kept in a one-roomed apartment in Moscow

He has become a local celebrity in the area. Some passers-by admire it and are in awe of a puma on a lead but not everyone is happy including a pop singer and reality television show contestant Vika Daineko who is shocked. 

The man walks his large, domesticated wild cat across the way from her apartment. She wants the man and his cat banned from the area and is in the process of collecting signatures on a petition to achieve that goal. She is also going to take legal action it is reported. She is scared for the area's children.

The Russians like their cats. There are some amazing cat breeders in Russia. They do take cat breeding to a fine art with certain breeds such as the Maine Coon and the hairless cats.

Note: videos on this site are typically made by people other than me and held on YouTube servers or the servers of other businesses (not the server storing this website). Sometimes the videos are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened I apologise but I have no control over it.

You do not have to be an animal advocate to see the unsuitability of this arrangement. Some people might say that if the puma was about to be euthanized then the man is doing a favour and improving cat welfare but that is unlikely to be the reason why he ended up with this mountain lion. He says he was bored so be adopted one to alleviate the boredom; but the problem is wider than that.

It is also about the local authorities and a lack of oversight. The authorities should have prevented this happening. It would appear that you don't need a licence to adopt a large wild cat in Russua; an exotic animal and one unsuited to flat dwelling.

In the UK you would have to apply for a licence and demonstrate that you have the ability to look after a mountain lion and that you have the right facilities. There would be inspections of paperwork and facilities if they granted a licence. In this instance, if this man had applied for a licence in the UK it would have been rejected, quite obviously. Therefore, I'm back to my original point which is that the authorities are ultimately to blame for a lax attitude leading to this unsatisfactory arrangement.

I don't like to see it happening. How did this mountain lion get into Russia in the first place? Who imported the animal? It must have been imported because there are no mountain lions in Russia. It must come from America. Perhaps it belonged to a zoo or there is somebody in America exporting mountain lions to Russia. If that is happening then there is a lax attitude in America towards the exportation of wild cat species such as this puma. A lot of this is to do with the law, the enforcement of the law or the lack of both. Those are the root causes of this problem.

Mountain lion has an animal in its mouth. What is it?

People are trying to figure out what animal this mountain lion has in its mouth. It is a nighttime kill captured on a camera trap. The quality is poor hence the difficulty in deciding what the animal is. I have lightened the photograph to try and provide more information. The photo was taken on 12th September 2020 at 20:58 and the temperature was 11 degrees Celsius or 53 degrees Fahrenheit.

 Mountain lion has an animal in its mouth. What is it? Credit see below.

The guesses on Facebook are:

• Ringtailed cat
• Large boar raccoon
• Goat
• What about a bobcat? - My suggestion

It is about the right size for a bobcat and pumas are known to kill bobcats. The photo was taken in Terrell County, Texas, USA and is provided by Texas Parks and Wildlife - Trans-Pecos Wildlife District.

They say that Borderlands Research Institute has identified at least 14 different prey animals in the diet of West Texas mountain lions. Here is the FB post. These sometimes stop working please note. If it has stopped - sorry!

Lions are opportunistic, preying on a wide range of animals. Work conducted by Borderlands Research Institute...

Posted by Texas Parks and Wildlife - Trans-Pecos Wildlife District on Thursday, January 14, 2021

How can cats jump so high?

The answer to the question is all about mechanics and muscles. The domestic cat and indeed the wild cats have lots of fast-twitch fatiguing muscle cells. These cells are designed to propel the animal quickly; to allow the animal to accelerate quickly, but they're not very good at prolonged effort because they tire. The cat is a sprinter rather than a long-distance runner such as the African wild dog, mule or horse.

The puma is perhaps the best jumper of the large wild cat species. Image: PoC.

The second reason is all about the mechanics, the leg bones, particularly the hind leg bones of the domestic cat which are long. The muscles working to move these long levers allow the cat to jump so high. The concept of long levers applying a stronger force than short levers can be seen in bolt cutters. They have long handles. And if you want to unscrew a nut which is rusted in or very stiff, if you use a long spanner you will be more successful than if you use a short one.

And of course the hindquarters of a domestic cat and the other cats such as the mountain lion are very powerful. When these muscles contract quickly combined with long levers the cat is propelled forward either to attack an animal or leap upwards. 

There is also the matter of power-to-weight ratio. The heavier cats will be less good at jumping than the lighter species. The lion, for instance, is not a great jumper relative to the leopard which is considerably lighter.

The lion is built to grab hold of large prey and subdue them. This is why their arms (forelegs) are immensely strong much like the tiger's. This power-to-weight ratio is best seen in the caracal which is a medium-sized wild cat species. This is the cat that jumps the highest. They have an ideal power-to-weight ratio. The picture below is of a caracal catching or trying to catch a bird (or an object thrown by someone to simulate a bird) in flight:

Caracal leaping to catch a bird in flight. Picture in public domain.

All the medium-sized cats are probably more adept at jumping vertically than the big cats. There is too much inertia to overcome in a big cat and the power-to-weight ratio is not as good as for the smaller species.

And one of the factor which may play a role as to why cats can jump so high is the floating shoulder. The forelimbs are connected to the rest of the body by muscle. The cats clavicle floats and is anchored by muscle. This allows cats to lengthen their stride and it enhances the range of motions that cats have. This indirectly helps a cat to jump well.

The cat's foot is elongated and it looks like a leg bone but it isn't. At the end are the toes and cats walk on their toes because they are digitigrades. I would argue that this also adds to the leverage that a domestic cat has which once again supports the ability to jump high and horizontally over long distances.

The video on this page is of a female F1 Savannah cat whose name is Magic. I don't know whether she is alive still but at the time she was the tallest domestic cat to the shoulder in the world. Savannah cats of this type i.e. first filials have a serval father and the serval has the longest legs to body size of all the wild cats. That's why the F1 Savannah cat is such a fantastic upwards jumper. Once again it's about leverage using long levers.

Eastern Cougar To Be Removed from the Endangered Species List

Camera trap photograph of cougar

The Fish and Wildlife Service propose removing the Eastern Cougar from the Endangered Species List because they say that it is “likely" to be extinct.  Therefore they are not completely sure.  The reason why they're not completely sure is because there are still cougar sightings in the east of the United States.  There are often seen in North Carolina for instance.  The Fish and Wildlife Service would say that these odd mountain lion sightings are cats that have wandered in from the west or escaped captive cougars.  They might also be from Florida where there is a small population of cougars and finally they may be incorrect sightings.

I have noticed that way back in 2011 the Fish and Wildlife Service made a similar pronouncement that the cougar was extinct in the East.  The difference this time is that they are proposing removing the species from the Endangered Species List.  Obviously if an animal is extinct there is no point in listing it as endangered.

Most cougars disappeared in the nineteenth century as they were killed by European immigrants or due to loss of their habitat when forests were cleared.  In addition, the cougar's main prey, white-tailed deer, was hunted by humans and almost became extinct in North America.

One formally reported sighting of a male cougar in the east of the USA was in 2011 when a solitary young male travelled 2000 miles from South Dakota through Minnesota, Wisconsin and New York.  It was killed on the highway in Connecticut. A motor vehicle killed this cougar.  In Florida, as I understand it, the Florida panther is most often killed by motor vehicles as highways criss-cross the state.  Highways also present natural barriers to wild cougars.

I wonder how may people consider this to be a sad day to declare the eastern cougar extinct.  There is one question mark for me and that is whether the eastern cougar is a distinct subspecies.

Canada: Two Cougars Killed Because They Killed Two Domestic Cats

I'm not sure that this is ethically correct. This is a story from British Columbia, Canada. Just over the border from the USA is a town called Cranbrook. The map shows you where it is.

Last Friday, a couple of days ago, a resident of the town, Karen King, found two dead cats outside her home. She telephoned the conservation officers who had a look at the dead cats. The conservation officers confirmed that cougars were involved in killing the domestic cats.

"We confirmed that, yes, cougars were involved with killing domestic cats," said Jared Connatty, one of the COs

It seems that the way they worked out that two cougars were involved in the killing of these cats was because they carried out an investigation by asking questions of local residents and the residents confirmed that two cougars had been hanging around the area for a few weeks before there were notified.

So what they did was to deploy tracking hounds who picked up the scent of the cougars at the last known location which led them to two juvenile cougars of around 10 months of age where they were killed (I presume shot). The hounds did not pick up the scent of the mother.

The conservation officers were a bit surprised that the mother was not present because cougar cubs don't leave the mother until about 16 to 18 months of age.

To recap: conservation officers who have a duty to conserve nature meaning wildlife decided that the only course of action was to kill two young mountain lions because two domestic cats that were wandering outside had been killed by them on their estimation. Might it not have been a better idea to have told the people living in the area to keep their domestic cat inside for a while and then to track the cougars. Once they had discovered where they were, to then capture them and relocate them. Perhaps that is impractical, I don't know but I do know that it makes more sense to me because I don't think the actions of these conservation officers was proportionate to the “crime" committed by the mountain lions.

I know it is extremely upsetting if one has lost one's cat companion. However, that might be a risk that one takes when living in Canada knowing full well that there are quite possibly mountain lions in the area. Knowing that, a cat owner therefore puts their cat companion in risk if they let them go outside wandering.

There is no information as to whether the two domestic cats were in fact domestic cats, strays or feral cats. There appears to be no complaint by a cat owner. It would seem that the reason why the conservation officers killed the mountain lions was because whenever a mountain lion wanders into a residential area they are killed on the basis that they are a potential hazard to residents. Once again I find that a poor way of dealing with the situation. If people build residential areas within the distribution of mountain lions then they are knowingly taking the possible risk of a mountain lion walking around their urban environment. On that basis, surely they can devise some method of dealing with mounted lives more humanely so that humans and wild cat can live harmoniously together?

These were young mountain lions and therefore relatively small in size and I will thought unable to genuinely harm people. They could have been dealt with more humanely. That is the point I'm making.

Lack of Proper Oversight Of Cougar Hunting In America

Big cat rescue make a point that had occurred to me for long time which is that the state governmental agencies who regulate the hunting of the cougar are funded through the license fees that permit people to hunt. This must be an incorrect and ill-thought out process.

If the regulatory agencies are funded by license fees then they will naturally wish to hand out as many licenses as they possibly can which will lead to a tendency to issue too many licenses for the sake of increased income. If too many licences are issued then too many cougars are shot and in addition the regulatory agency is no longer doing its job in protecting wildlife and ensuring that there is a balance between people and cat.

Because too many cougars are shot, the agency then have to sell the idea to the public that there are plenty of cougars about. Do they concoct sightings and are the sightings of escaped pet cougars?

The fees earned through licences should go to the state treasury and the regulatory agencies should receive a fixed budget from the state government. There should be no motivation or bias created through income. Their role is not to be a business but to be a totally unbiased regulator whose underlying goal is to protect wildlife and maintain a balance between wildlife and people. Even that goal is impossible because the population of people is consistently growing and therefore the balance between people and wildlife is consistently changing in the direction of less wildlife and more people. So where is the balance between the two?

I can remember the shell oil spill. Do you remember that? It was a massive ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The way I see it is that the regulatory authorities dishing out licenses to oil companies were getting backhanders to allow unsafe practices which in this instance led to this massive ecological disaster.

I have no evidence to support my allegation but that's the way it seems to me and it is very similar to what is going on with respect to the wildlife and fishery agencies. They simply are not doing their job.

I also reminded of the Florida panther. The population of the Florida panther is fixed and about 100 and they live in a fixed island (meaning enclosed and a fixed size) habitat. Commercial development continues to take place in Florida placing ever more pressure on the habitat of the Florida panther. There are more buildings, more roads and more people in the same space. What is the wildlife agency doing in Florida to protect their precious cougar? Is someone getting backhanders? And I'm cynical but that is the way it seems to me.

Picture of Beautiful Mountain Lion

This is a camera trap photo of a puma. The photo has been refined a bit by me. For some people it will be just another mountain lion picture but I think it is a bit special.

Camera trap photo by USFWS Headquarters

Firstly, it is "real". This is a wild mountain lion going about his business. I think that adds credibility to a photo over the well composed captive cat photos.

Secondly, you get a very nice sense of the grace and power of the mountain lion. Such a beautiful cat and so sad, for me, that it is still hunted (with dogs). The mountain lion is a very classy jumper, one of the best amongst all the wildcats. You can see where that comes from in the muscular hind quarters.

One day, hopefully before it is extirpated (totally destroyed) in the wild, people will stop shooting at the puma for fun. I know that sentence will annoy the hunters and shooters. However, it is uncivilised to shoot a wild animal for pleasure. We have moved on. Well some of us have. See mountain lion tracks.

Wild Cats of South America

A list of the wildcats of South America in a spreadheet plus range map details and links to more. The wildcats are, in descending order of size: jaguar, puma, ocelot, jaguarundi, Geoffroy's cat, Andean mountain cat, margay, pampas cat and oncilla. Please go to the wild cat species page to see the wildcats of the world.



Selected associated pages:

• Jaguar photograph
• Jaguarundi photograph

Bobcat Picture

This is a camera trap bobcat picture from siwild on Flickr. This sort of wildcat picture is not pretty in the conventional sense. This is because the camera trap camera is less sophisticated in terms of its ability to create high image quality. However, being motion activated it captures the kind of image that you don't get with human operated cameras. They are wilder, more real. You get a real sense of what it is like in the wild for the wild cats.

Bobcat Picture - in the wild - camera trap image - by siwild - see it on Smithsonian Wild

I have improved the image quality slightly although there has been no adjustment to the content.

You can see the moon above the bobcat. This bobcat picture was taken in the state of Virginia, USA. The words on the lower RHS of the photograph is the name of the manufacturer of the camera.

The bobcat is the most common wildcat in the USA. It occupies areas in the east of the US from where the puma (cougar) has been removed or extirpated. The bobcat is part of the lynx genus. In Canada the Canada lynx is that country's version of the bobcat. The Eurasian lynx is the biggest of the lynx cats.

Is the cougar endangered?

Puma in forest. Camera trap photo.

The formal answer is provided by the IUCN Red List™. They should know as they are a bunch of experts who have taken it upon themselves to report to the world their assessment as to the the survivability of all the world's species, flora and fauna.

As at 2011, they say that the cougar (Puma or mountain lion) is of "Least Concern". This means that the cougar is not endangered according to them.

These are the categories:

IUCN Red List for Cats -- The symbols mean the following:

Symbol	Meaning
EX	Extinct
EW	Extinct in the Wild
CR	Critically Endangered
EN	Endangered
VU	Vulnerable
NT	Near Threatened
LC	Least Concern

You can see that "LC" is the best assessment meaning not endangered. Is this correct? They say that there are about 15,000 cougars in North America. I don't think it is correct. If you take a long term view you will come up with a different answer. It depends on how far into the future you are basing your assessment. In 300 years time there will be no cougars in the wild, probably. On that basis and on current trends the risk is high.

It seems to me that assessments follow the event. That is OK but they should also make long term predictions as a proactive measure. Reporting after the event does nothing for conservation and the purpose of the Red List™ is to aid in conservation, isn't it?

Associated page: IUCN Red List for Cats