Showing posts with label cougar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cougar. Show all posts
COUGAR-RELATED DEATH THREATS
Somebody is threatening to shoot and kill an elementary school student, possibly to avenge the recent killing of a cougar in Chicago. FULL STORY at Chicago Journal/Booster...
COUGAR CAME FROM SOUTH DAKOTA
Good report from WLS ABC7 about that big cat...
More is now known about the background of the cougar that was shot and killed by police in Chicago's Roscoe Village community earlier this month. Tests confirm the animal was originally from South Dakota. FULL REPORT at ABC7, which is vastly superior to The Bench (lots more TV cameras, bigger budget, better makeup, hot female reporters, and so on)
Also, read Transient Cougars as Colonizers. (Can I say that I reported this before ABC7 did? I did, really.)
Cougar: Where Was Animal Control?
The missing part of the cougar story
QUESTION: What was Animal Care and Control doing between the time that the cougar was reported and the time the police killed it?
ANSWER: They don't seem to know....
Transient Cougars as Colonizers
Did the Chicago cougar, shot this week in Roscoe Village, come from Wisconsin or the Black Hills? Was it a potential colonizer? Maybe; they're still trying to figure it out.
It was probably not a Wisconsin native. Cougars no longer live in Wisconsin. They are sometimes seen there, however, says the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) on their web site.
The big cats get around. Sometimes it's because they are displaced by development, sometimes they are in search of a mate. Like wolves, they are territorial and sometimes drive members of their own species out of an area to protect their own hunting ground. And sometimes, no doubt, a big cat just gets lost.
The Daily Chronicle reports that a wildlife supervisor for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources "had been tracking a cougar sighting in his state. A Wisconsin resident encountered a cougar in the second story of their barn." Although the Wisconsin DNR says cougars no longer inhabit Wisconsin, they also say that cougars are sighted in the state from time to time. Those cougars, it is believed, roam in from other areas such as Canada or Wyoming.
The Wisconsin DNR web site says this: "Cougars (Puma concolor) also known as puma, mountain lion, panther, catamount, American lion, and mishibijn (Ojibwa), once roamed throughout the state of Wisconsin. It was one of three wild cats native to the state, along with the bobcat (Lynx rufus) and the Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis). Currently bobcats are the only known breeding wild cat in the state..." The web site also has an interesting map of recent - very recent - cougar sightings.
The Chicago Tribune reported that "wildlife officials say that a DNA test should reveal whether a cougar killed Monday in Chicago took a 1,000-mile trip from the Black Hills of South Dakota through Wisconsin before being shot by police in the Roscoe Village neighborhood."
A thousand miles is not really that far, if you think about it. Walking at 3 miles per hour, for 12 hours a day, a human could travel 1,000 miles in 666 days. A healthy cougar would move more quickly, and could easily traverse the distance in about a year. So yes, the cougar could very well have walked here from South Dakota.
An interesting paper (3 pages, .pdf) from 2005, titled "Long-Distance Dispersal by a Subadult Male Cougar From the Black Hills, South Dakota" supports my assertion:
The dispersal reported ... indicates that cougars from western populations have the ability to make long-distance movements over relatively short periods to the south and east. Thus, managers in these regions will need to verify sightings of cougars, not only to address questions from their constituents and media contacts, but also to determine whether they represent potential colonizers of vacant habitat. FULL PAPER at South Dakota State University...
Whoa! "POTENTIAL COLONIZERS of vacant habitat." In other words, cougars leave the area they were born in, then go out to conquer the world. Literally. Think about that. There are hundreds of thousands of square miles of "vacant habitat."
The total land area of Wisconsin, our neighbor to the north, is 54,314 square miles. Illinois has 55,593 square miles of land area. That's over 100,000 square miles in just these two states, and a heck of a lot of it would be considered as "vacant habitat" by cougars. With plenty of deer, rabbit and other tasty critters to feed on, cougars would have no difficulty in re-colonizing remote or sparsely populated areas of Wisconsin, Illinois, or any other state.
The Bench's advice: Carry copious amounts of catnip just in case you run into a colonizer.
It was probably not a Wisconsin native. Cougars no longer live in Wisconsin. They are sometimes seen there, however, says the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) on their web site.The big cats get around. Sometimes it's because they are displaced by development, sometimes they are in search of a mate. Like wolves, they are territorial and sometimes drive members of their own species out of an area to protect their own hunting ground. And sometimes, no doubt, a big cat just gets lost.
The Daily Chronicle reports that a wildlife supervisor for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources "had been tracking a cougar sighting in his state. A Wisconsin resident encountered a cougar in the second story of their barn." Although the Wisconsin DNR says cougars no longer inhabit Wisconsin, they also say that cougars are sighted in the state from time to time. Those cougars, it is believed, roam in from other areas such as Canada or Wyoming.
The Wisconsin DNR web site says this: "Cougars (Puma concolor) also known as puma, mountain lion, panther, catamount, American lion, and mishibijn (Ojibwa), once roamed throughout the state of Wisconsin. It was one of three wild cats native to the state, along with the bobcat (Lynx rufus) and the Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis). Currently bobcats are the only known breeding wild cat in the state..." The web site also has an interesting map of recent - very recent - cougar sightings.
The Chicago Tribune reported that "wildlife officials say that a DNA test should reveal whether a cougar killed Monday in Chicago took a 1,000-mile trip from the Black Hills of South Dakota through Wisconsin before being shot by police in the Roscoe Village neighborhood."
A thousand miles is not really that far, if you think about it. Walking at 3 miles per hour, for 12 hours a day, a human could travel 1,000 miles in 666 days. A healthy cougar would move more quickly, and could easily traverse the distance in about a year. So yes, the cougar could very well have walked here from South Dakota.
An interesting paper (3 pages, .pdf) from 2005, titled "Long-Distance Dispersal by a Subadult Male Cougar From the Black Hills, South Dakota" supports my assertion:The dispersal reported ... indicates that cougars from western populations have the ability to make long-distance movements over relatively short periods to the south and east. Thus, managers in these regions will need to verify sightings of cougars, not only to address questions from their constituents and media contacts, but also to determine whether they represent potential colonizers of vacant habitat. FULL PAPER at South Dakota State University...
Whoa! "POTENTIAL COLONIZERS of vacant habitat." In other words, cougars leave the area they were born in, then go out to conquer the world. Literally. Think about that. There are hundreds of thousands of square miles of "vacant habitat."
The total land area of Wisconsin, our neighbor to the north, is 54,314 square miles. Illinois has 55,593 square miles of land area. That's over 100,000 square miles in just these two states, and a heck of a lot of it would be considered as "vacant habitat" by cougars. With plenty of deer, rabbit and other tasty critters to feed on, cougars would have no difficulty in re-colonizing remote or sparsely populated areas of Wisconsin, Illinois, or any other state.
The Bench's advice: Carry copious amounts of catnip just in case you run into a colonizer.
COP: "I JUST KILLED A F***ING COUGAR!"
What REALLY happened with that cougar shooting?
The Chicago Journal story today contradicts Police Supt. Jody P. Weis's claim that a single police officer shot and killed the big cat.
Not so, says the Chicago Journal story, which quotes a resident as saying that "20 uniformed police officers were lined up" to contain the cougar into a small parking area just off of the alley. "About six or seven officers opened fire on the cougar."
Too much and not enough. That's what some residents of Roscoe Village are saying about Monday night's shooting by Chicago police officers of a cougar in a neighborhood alley.
Two elements in the strange animal tale on the city's North side concern neighbors in Roscoe Village. Some say that Animal Care and Control did not respond quickly enough, while others feel that police may have overreacted by "shooting up the neighborhood." FULL STORY at CHICAGO JOURNAL - BOOSTER...
Roscoe Village Cougar on Video
Captured on video: The cougar that was killed by a barrage of police gunfire in Roscoe Village yesterday. WATCH IT...
RELATED: Police Defend Fatal Cougar Shooting
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