Eastern Cougar Is Declared Extinct, With an Asterisk

Seven decades after the last reported sighting of the eastern cougar, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service declared it extinct Wednesday and recommended that it be removed from the nation’s endangered species list.

There’s one wrinkle, though: it may not be extinct, exactly.

Scientists are moving toward the conclusion that the eastern cougar was erroneously classified as a separate subspecies in the first place. As a result of a genetic study conducted in 2000, most biologists now believe there is no real difference between the western and eastern branches of the cougar family.

Either way, the “eastern” cougar as such is no longer with us. Any recent sightings in the cougar’s historic range, which stretched from eastern Ontario and Michigan eastward to Maine and southward to Georgia, Tennessee and Missouri, were actually sightings of its relatives, the Fish and Wildlife Service said.

“It’s extinct,” said Mark McCollough, a wildlife biologist with the agency’s offices in Maine, referring to the official determination by his agency.

“But it’s not?” he was asked.

“But it’s not,” he confirmed. “It may well return to part of its range.”

Cougar populations from the West are following the eastward migration of the coyote, Dr. McCollough said, and some have settled in the Dakotas. At least one breeding pair is now in Nebraska, he added.

The reclusive cougars — also called pumas, catamounts, mountain lions and, perhaps most fittingly, “ghost cats” — came under siege in the eastern United States starting in the 1700s, when they were hunted by European settlers. States put bounties on the cats with the goal of protecting livestock, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

“There was a general attitude back in the late 1700s and early 1800s that any predator was a bad predator and some were created worse than others and cougars were among the worst,” Dr. McCollough said.

The last confirmed eastern cougar was trapped in the late 1930s, the agency said.

Martin Miller, the chief of the endangered species division in the service’s Northeastern office, said that many sightings had been reported since then, but that virtually all of those cats were determined either to be from the West or to be South American pumas that were bought as pets and then released. The eastern cougar was listed as an endangered species in 1973.

Mr. Miller said in an interview that no regulations or restrictions were ever imposed in an effort to help the eastern cougar recover, although a recovery plan drafted in 1982 “held out hope, expressed the possibility that a population still existed in remote areas.”

Also as a result of genetic research, Dr. McCollough said, the Florida panther, which is under protection under the Endangered Species Act, might eventually be reclassified as a distinct segment of the larger cougar family.

A handful of other species on the endangered species list are presumed to be extinct and may eventually be recommended for delisting, including the Bachman’s warbler and the little Mariana fruit bat, the agency says.

A 2008 report to Congress by the Fish and Wildlife Service said that of more than 1,200 species protected under the Endangered Species Act, 19 were presumed extinct.

[nytimes]