Another Angle On The Big Pusscat Story.

[Chief Grey Bear]

Don't think that is what he said!

C'mon MDC, admit it, there are big cats in Missouri and lets deal with them. Don't keep it under your coat tails like you did the bears all of these years.

I believe that is exactly what he said.

[Outside Bend]

I don't buy the story that they are just wondering over here from the Rockies or South Dakota. I could somewhat buy the fact that the bears were moving in from Arkansas, but not this one.

Before the 1970's you wouldn't have seen an armadillo in Missouri. Today you can't swing a sack full of dead cats without hitting one. In the 1850's armadillos were only found in extreme southern Texas- since then their range has expanded throughout much of the southern US. It doesn't mean MDC has been drop-kicking them out of black helicopters, it just means that animals are doing what animals do- exploiting available habitat.

A century ago you wouldn't have found coyotes in New England. Now they're relatively common. Not because some mustachio'ed villain was clandestinely letting them go, but because animals will do what they do- exploit available habitat.

A century ago you would've had a tough time finding raccoons in our northern prairie states. In the past few decades their populations have been expanding because, as you can probably guess, animals will exploit available habitat.

Suppression of wildfires paved the way for raccoons and armadillos. Logging and conversion to agriculture paved the way for coyotes in the eastern US. And the return of forests and healthy prey populations has paved the way for mountain lions in the Ozarks. And just like any other critter, lions are going to exploit available habitat.

Given all the other critters out there which have had no problem expanding their ranges, it seems you're selling the lions a bit short.

[ness]

It's always amusing to me how statements get simplified changing the meaning.

I believe MDC's position is that there's no evidence of a breeding population. Evidence would be kittens, pregnant females, trail cam footage of cats making whoopy, etc. They're not saying it's not happening, but are wisely not declaring it is happening until there's proof. You arm chair biologists and MDC conspiracy theorists should, at a minimum, offer up a recent official quote from MDC denying the presence of cougars.

[Outside Bend]

Just north of me a few miles one had been sited many times but it seems it found it's self in the wrong place at the wrong time for it got a bullet from someone. whoever it was did it right by shooting shoveling and shutting up. but mysteriously it was dug up by the conservation department leading all that herd about it to believe it had a tracking device implanted in it in order for them to be able to find it. So it sounds to me like they know something that they are not letting people know.

Some job of shutting up, if "all that herd about it," assumed MDC played a role

To my knowledge critters like lions have to be tracked with an external radio tag, usually attached to a collar. Unless the cougar was sporting some jewelry at the time it was shot, it's pretty unlikely anyone at MDC knew where it was. Much more likely that someone he told tipped MDC off for the game thief anonymous reward deal- criminals tend to be a notoriously untrustworthy lot

[Wayne SW/MO]

It's not that hard to understand if you understand that there is no control of the population in the heavily populated western States.

[Tim Smith]

JD, you're usually more informed and logical than this and the conspiracy theory is beneath you.

Large predatory mammals have huge ranges and any biologist can tell you that you can stuff the state full of mountain lions and they're not going to make a dent in river otters (I hope you were joking about that).

Mountain lions these days readily wander through marginal habitat and show up many hundreds of miles from their home ranges on a regular basis. That's a long established fact.

[Ham]

Wouldn't the moutain lions be much more likely to attack a deer rather than an elk?

[junkman]

the public radio station a while back ran a piece on the cat that was found up in the New England states and it said that some of the closest cats were in Missouri. So I guess they got some info from someone.

[Al Agnew]

Or they were misinformed, or they didn't really say that. Methinks you've been listening to too many of the good ol' boys at the local coffee shop, or the local bar. These conspiracy theories are pretty ridiculous. Again we ask, to what end would MDC or anybody else secretly have a program, costing lots of money, to reintroduce mountain lions?

And yes, while a mountain lion would prey upon very young elk, elk are not their preferred prey, deer are.

Let's look a little more closely at the cats supposedly coming from the Dakotas, which happens to be one of the closest areas to Missouri that holds a good population. Mountain lions don't particularly like open country, which describes a lot of eastern South Dakota, not to mention Nebraska and Kansas. But the river valleys give them good travel corridors. So young males, looking for two things--territory and mates--in an area that is well saturated with cougars already, take off, following the river corridors, including the Missouri River. They don't want to strike out across the open agricultural plains of Nebraska, nor the extensive and mostly open agricultural land of Iowa back of the hills along the river. Plenty of deer to munch on during their travels (which is different than what it was for much of the 20th century, when there weren't a whole lot of deer to keep them fed along the river in Iowa and Nebraska and northern Missouri). But no females. And a lot of humans. So they keep moving down the river valley, looking for babes and safer country. Any wonder they make it to Missouri? Any wonder, in that case, that a couple have been killed north of Kansas City, and another one seen down close to St. Louis, still along the Missouri?

Females have smaller territories, and don't do much looking around for males, because the males find them. So it's a lot less likely for a female to make it to Missouri than a male. I suspect that if and when a breeding population does get established in MO, it will be from a female or two released from captivity by the doofuses that think a cougar would make a good pet, hooking up with a wandering wild male.

[Outside Bend]

Perhaps if it were just an increase in MO I'd be more skeptical, but lions are showing up in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Georgia, Indiana, and several other states. That'd be some conspiracy.

And if you're going to go through all the time, risk, and expense of creating a clandestine cougar-stocking program, why would you refuse to enforce regulations designed to protect those animals? Why would you let every amish hunting party or sixteen year old kid shoot threaten the success of your double-secret program without any sort of legal action? If re-establishing mountain lion populations was so important MDC would be willing to go behind the public's back, I assure you prosecution of the folks shooting those animals would be a serious priority.

It'd make a great Austin Powers bit. But it all falls apart when you take the time to actually think about it.