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Tag: cougar

  • Rare, ‘uninvited visitor’ seen prowling in the dark outside Oklahoma home, video shows

    Rare, ‘uninvited visitor’ seen prowling in the dark outside Oklahoma home, video shows

    A rarely seen predator was spotted wandering across the backyard of a home in Drumright, Oklahoma, video shows.

    A rarely seen predator was spotted wandering across the backyard of a home in Drumright, Oklahoma, video shows.

    Screengrab from video shared to Facebook by Drumright Police Department.

    Police are warning residents of a small Oklahoma town to stay alert after a backyard camera caught a rarely seen predator prowling at night.

    The “uninvited guest” was spotted outside a home in Drumright, the police department said in an April 16 Facebook post. Drumright, a town of about 2,500 people, is a roughly 40-mile drive southwest of Tulsa.

    In the video, a mountain lion can be seen passing within several feet of the home, strolling into the glare of a porch light before disappearing into the dark.

    “Maybe that’s why all the cats around here were stirred up last night,” a local woman commented on the post.

    Police have contacted state game wardens about the animal, but officials reminded the public to remain cautious and to use common sense.

    “If you see the cat, don’t try to approach it,” the post said.

    The mountain lion report has been verified, Jerrod Davis, senior wildlife biologist with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, told McClatchy News in a phone interview. While the department receives many reports throughout the year, often well into the hundreds, very few are actually able to be confirmed.

    “It is exciting when you actually get to see a good report,” Davis said. “From a biological perspective it’s kind of a win. But you just always have to balance those biological perspectives with public safety and human conflict.”

    As of April 17, the department has no plans to search for or capture the mountain lion, as it doesn’t seem to be bothering anyone.

    “Without there being any actual complaints, we’re just letting the mountain lion do what it needs to do, as long as it doesn’t cause any issues,” he said.

    “Luckily, cats do cat things, and cat things usually include chasing deer, and not chasing goats and cows.”

    It’s not clear where the mountain lion may have come from, but it most likely came from out of state.

    There is no “viable, breeding population” of the big cats in Oklahoma, but the animals have a tendency to wander far and wide from where they’re born, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife says. However, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and South Dakota all have mountain lion populations.

    Cougars that wander into the state often come from Colorado or the Black Hills of South Dakota, Davis said.

    Hunting mountain lions is against the law in Oklahoma, but residents are allowed to use lethal means to defend themselves, pets and domesticated animals if they are in danger of being attacked.

    There have been 77 confirmed mountain lion sightings in Oklahoma since 2002, as of December, according to state wildlife officials.

    Mitchell Willetts is a real-time news reporter covering the central U.S. for McClatchy. He is a University of Oklahoma graduate and outdoors enthusiast living in Texas.

    Mitchell Willetts

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  • Cyclist In Washington State Suffers Injuries After Cougar Attack – KXL

    Cyclist In Washington State Suffers Injuries After Cougar Attack – KXL

    SEATTLE (AP) — A woman suffered injuries to her face and neck after a cougar leapt out and “latched onto” her while she was cycling with a group on a trail in Washington state, authorities said.

    The incident happened Saturday on a trail northeast of Fall City, a community about 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Seattle, KOMO-TV reported. Friends of the woman, 60, “were able to detach and fight this thing off” after it ”latched onto” her, said Sgt. Carlo Pace with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Police.

    “They were able to pin down a good size lion with its claws and teeth and everything else under a mountain bike until we arrived,” he said.

    The woman was released from the hospital.

    The agency described the cougar as a 75-pound (34-kilogram) young male. The animal was shot and killed by wildlife police.

    Witnesses told authorities they had seen a second cougar run through the area. But agency police during a search were not able to find a second animal.

    The agency said cougar attacks on people are rare.

    Last July, an 8-year-old on a camping trip in Olympic National Park in Washington sustained minor injuries in a cougar attack.

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    Grant McHill

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  • Rare predator with missing teeth is mysteriously found dead in Arkansas, officials say

    Rare predator with missing teeth is mysteriously found dead in Arkansas, officials say


    A rarely seen predator was recently found dead in the Arkansas wilderness, and it’s not clear how it died, according to officials.

    A rarely seen predator was recently found dead in the Arkansas wilderness, and it’s not clear how it died, according to officials.

    Mick Haupt via Unsplash.

    A rare predator was recently found dead in the northern Arkansas wilderness, raising questions about where it came from and what killed it.

    The animal, a mountain lion, was spotted in the Sylamore Wildlife Management Area, in Stone County, the state Game and Fish Commission said in a Feb. 9 news release.

    It’s the first time a cougar has been found dead in the state since 2014, when a deer hunter fatally shot a 148-pound male in southern Arkansas, according to officials. Before that, a mountain lion hadn’t been reported killed in the state since 1975.

    The mountain lion was found dead in the Sylamore Wildlife Management Area in Stone County, Arkansas, officials say.
    The mountain lion was found dead in the Sylamore Wildlife Management Area in Stone County, Arkansas, officials say. Screengrab of Facebook post by Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.

    However, this newly discovered big cat in the Sylamore WMA wasn’t shot, and there’s no evidence it was hit by a car either, officials said. Its cause of death is, at least for now, a mystery.

    The 118-pound, 7-foot long male was examined by wildlife experts. The cougar was “extremely thin” with “severely worn, broken and missing teeth,” experts said, and its “stomach was empty.”

    “Further examination will involve testing for viruses and toxins,” the Commission said, adding that tissue samples will also be sent out for testing.

    Male cougars generally weigh between 145-170 pounds, according to the National Park Service, meaning this particular cat was significantly underweight.

    Could the mountain lion have simply starved to death? It’s known to happen, but only rarely, experts say.

    “Disease and starvation are occasional causes of cougar deaths,” according to the NPS, but “competition with other cougars or predators and human hunting are the main causes of mortality.”

    Though they grow to be large, powerful apex predators, survival is often still a struggle for mountain lions. Roughly half of kittens don’t survive their first year, the NPS says.

    They could once be found all throughout Arkansas, but had more-or-less vanished by 1920, the Commission said, but there have been 23 confirmed sightings in the state beginning in 2010.

    “They are typically shy and reclusive, and they rarely attack humans,” state officials said. “They have learned to avoid people, and they usually run away if they hear or see humans.”

    Mountain lion sightings alone don’t mean they’re established in the state, or are reproducing, and officials have said in the past that there are no breeding pairs in Arkansas, and lions seen in the state likely wandered in from elsewhere, KATV reported in 2015.

    A DNA analysis of the mountain lion killed by a hunter in 2014 indicated that it “most likely” came from the Black Hills of Wyoming or South Dakota, officials said.

    Mitchell Willetts is a real-time news reporter covering the central U.S. for McClatchy. He is a University of Oklahoma graduate and outdoors enthusiast living in Texas.



    Mitchell Willetts

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  • Griffith Park hosts first P-22 Day since death of L.A.’s beloved cougar

    Griffith Park hosts first P-22 Day since death of L.A.’s beloved cougar

    The legacy of Los Angeles’ most famous mountain lion continues Sunday at Griffith Park with the eighth annual P-22 Day.

    Wildlife supporters will unite at Shane’s Inspiration playground from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. to enjoy live music, food trucks, muralists and native-plant giveaways.

    Organized by the National Wildlife Federation’s #SaveLACougars campaign, the free, family-friendly festival hopes to honor the famed mountain lion who amassed a celebrity-worthy following and kick-started campaigns to save wildlife throughout Southern California.

    Beth Pratt, a regional executive director in California for the National Wildlife Federation, has celebrated the renowned puma at the park since 2016.

    At the start of Sunday’s festivities, she took to the hills where P-22 once roamed.

    Pratt recalled more than 13,000 people attending last year’s celebration for L.A.’s most famous cat. But this is the first time P-22 Day has been held since the cougar’s death, so this year’s crowd might be the biggest yet.

    “The loss is still really raw for a lot of people,” Pratt said. “During the other seven [festivals] he was here snapping and listening to the music we were playing.”

    Not literally, joked Pratt, who sports a tattoo of the cougar’s face on her arm.

    But wildlife supporters could bank on the big cat coming down from the mountaintop to amaze onlookers who were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of him over the years.

    P-22 first captured the world’s attention in 2012, when a motion-sensing camera caught an image of his hindquarters and tail in Griffith Park.

    He survived a parasitic infection and a cramped range in Griffith Park, but officials with the National Park Service and the state’s wildlife department captured P-22 after he started to show increasing “signs of distress,” including three attacks on dogs in a month and several near-miss encounters with people walking in Los Feliz and Silver Lake.

    Thought to be about 12 years old at the time of his death, the mountain lion was “compassionately euthanized” in December 2022. He was suffering from a number of health issues at the time as well as from internal injuries that officials believed occurred after he was hit by a car.

    The cougar’s popularity only grew through the years after his picture was first seen in The Times and in other news coverage over the years.

    By order of the Los Angeles City Council, every Oct. 22 is celebrated as “P-22 Day.”

    The sad plight of P-22 — isolated by freeways in the relatively cramped greenery of Griffith Park — motivated state officials who wanted to help prevent other creatures from suffering a similar fate to take action.

    The result is the world’s largest wildlife overpass, under construction over the 101 Freeway near Liberty Canyon in Agoura Hills.

    Pratt remembers raising millions to construct the crossing, which is expected to provide safe passage for mountain lions and other wildlife after completion in 2025.

    But Pratt reminds the public there’s more to be done as officials ready for the next phase of a fundraising campaign.

    Pratt hopes P-22’s legacy is the link that connects Southern California to all wildlife.

    “We want to do more,” she said.

    Thankfully, Pratt finds partners in nearly 70 other organizations planning to educate the public on P-22 Day.

    “That is P-22’s legacy,” Pratt exclaimed, “showing people in a real way — off the scientific paper — how they can make a difference in the lives of amazing predators.”

    There are plenty more events planned throughout Los Angeles during Urban Wildlife Week, but the hike retracing P-22’s journey is among the toughest, according to Pratt.

    “The whole reason they do it is to show how hard it is for a person to do it, much less a mountain lion,” Pratt explained.

    “It goes to show,” she said, “there’s a lot more we can do to make it a little easier for them.”

    Brennon Dixson

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