Mountain Lions in Virginia: How They're Here and Why It's Denied

Once a year or so, in any rural area of Virginia you will have some stories in the local papers about sightings of cougars. Every time, DGIF and any other government agencies act as though the witness is claiming to have been kidnapped by aliens. The responses are so knee-jerk as to invite doubt over the legitimacy of DGIF's denials of the existence of cougars in Virginia.

Officially, the eastern subspecies of cougar was completely wiped out over 100 years ago, with the exception of a remnant population in the Florida Everglades. Even that remnant population is no longer genetically distinct, as critically low numbers eventually prompted conservationists to introduce western cougars into the population in order to prevent inbreeding.

For most of the last century, sightings of cougars in the eastern states were scarce. But in the last 20 years, reported encounters with the cats have increased. This has been particularly true in Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina.

There are 2 questions that need to be asked. First, how are the cougars back? Second, why are government agencies in denial?

It is my belief that the animals being so frequently spotted are not, unfortunately, the product of a remnant population of eastern cougars. They are cougars - just not of that critically endangered (or arguably extinct) eastern subspecies.

The idea of this being a remnant population seems far-fetched in the sense that so much time elapsed with few sightings. It is true that big, stealthy cats like mountain lions or leopards can live practically right on top of humans without their noticing it. Peter Capstick wrote of a pair of leopards living in a soccer stadium right in the middle of Johannesburg for months undetected; the duration of their stay being made clear by the later discovery of their lair and the accompanying array of rotting debris from past meals. But rural areas in America are filled each year with experienced hunters who spend a lot of time tracking animals and paying very, very close attention to what is in the woods. We also have professional foresters, rangers and field biologists out in our national forests and parks every day doing work that would have prompted regular encounters.

Those kinds of encounters with experienced outdoors people and wildlife professionals have been happening in recent decades. But for a long time they weren't, and if populations were so very low for, say, 50 years that nobody was even seeing cougars, then it's hard to believe that genetic diversity could have been sufficient for the population to ever rebound.

No, I don't think that what we are looking at now is a remnant population of cougars. I think that it is a growing, breeding population that originated from escaped exotic pets.

Quick; tell me where the nearest tiger is? Hint: probably not the zoo. There are about 10,000 captive tigers in the United States, according to most of the expert estimates I have seen. Most of these are being kept as exotic pets or on 'tiger farms' that produce hides and other tiger parts (these are hybrids of tiger subspecies, 'generic tigers,' thus dodging status as endangered animals). That's just tigers. Lions, leopards, cerval cats, etc. have their own surprising counts. Pet cougars are far more common than tigers or other really big cats. According to the Florida Panther Society, there are about 1,000 pet cougars in Florida alone.

For a real eye-opener, take a look at some of the websites out there about cougars as pets. Asking a few friends here in town, I've found out about at least 2 people in my county who keep pet cougars. I guarantee you that there are plenty more than that.

Just like with regular house cats, sometimes a pet cougar is going to escape. It's common enough to have prompted a few articles online on how to find your escaped big cat if it gets out. The thing with many of the people who keep these animals is that one is often not enough. The one cougar gets lonely and bored during the day, so they get another one. Maybe more. If a door is left ajar, you could very easily have a breeding pair heading for the hills.

Now my purpose here is not to pass judgment on people who keep exotic pets. My point is just that keeping cougars as pets has become so very common that the idea of there not being a breeding population of mountain lions in the eastern United States is kind of ridiculous. Of course there are wild cougars in Virginia. How could there not be? Even if 2 cougars escape 50 miles apart from each other, odds aren't bad that they'll eventually meet and breed. Under normal circumstances cougars have extremely large home ranges and run into potential mates or enemies by stumbling across old scent marks and following them up for days.

What little genetic evidence we have seems to bear out the exotic pet trade origins of cougars in the eastern states. Genetic tests were conducted on a cougar cub that was hit by a car in Kentucky. It was found to be of mixed South American and western descent. A classic exotic pet trade hybrid. There is simply no way that a South American cougar could have mated with a cougar from the American west without human intervention. The fact that it was a cub without a collar also suggests that the escaped animals are in fact breeding in the wild.

Without getting much closer and more intimate with a wild cougar than anyone in their right mind would, it's impossible to look at the animal and say what subspecies it is a member of. Most people would look at a western cougar, an Everglades cougar and a South American cougar without having any idea of what the difference is supposed to be. Indeed, the validity of even labeling these different groups as sub-species per se is still debated among taxonomists. So for all practical purposes, it doesn't really matter where the cougars came from. They will all look and behave the same way, given a particular environment and variety of prey.

This brings us to the second question that I posed earlier, which was why government agencies deny that these thousands of sightings have taken place. In large part, it's the fact that the eastern cougar is still on the federal endangered species list. If DGIF (or any other state's wildlife agency) officially agrees that there are eastern cougars running around, then suddenly they have a whole host of obligations. Conservation groups would descend on them, demanding efforts to nurture and protect this animal and it's habitat. They'd have to pay for studies and find the funds and the strategy for protecting the habitat. Private land owners might suddenly face development restrictions on what they can do with their own land.

Meanwhile, there'd be a whole other backlash from people concerned about the eventual consequences of living with a very large predator that can and does eat human beings on occasion. One group of hunters would be asking to hunt them right away while another group would be asking that they be protected and nurtured in order to produce a large enough population to hunt in small numbers indefinitely.

In a nutshell, officially admitting that there are wild cougars in Virginia invites a political mess that none of these people really wants to deal with. Can you really blame them? So in response to sighting after sighting and article after article, DGIF and other agencies give the same old 'swamp gas and weather balloons' routine, as if we were talking about unicorns or velociraptors hiding out in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Their potential 'out' when some hunter finally shoots one and forces the issue into everyone's lap is the fact that, as I have explained here, odds are that these are not in fact eastern cougars at all but rather exotic pet trade hybrids. Hybrids which have no official status in wildlife regulations and are not considered endangered animals.

At that point, DGIF will almost certainly attempt to calm everyone down by pointing out that these are the product of escaped pets. This is what other states have done in the same situation. That takes care of the legal protection issue, but as for the rest it changes nothing. In terms of either safety or a desire to restore the old ecology of Virginia with a large, top level carnivorous cat, who the heck cares what subspecies it is? The worst part is that people usually swallow this kind of crap. And certainly DGIF will say that we have no reason to think that the escaped animals are breeding, so they don't really count, etc. But you'd have to be a complete idiot to think that there is any reason why these cats wouldn't be doing what comes naturally and breeding in the wild.

Many of these pet cougars are not spayed or neutered. Not only because the potential cubs are worth money down the road, but it's got to be hard to find a vet who is willing to deal with an animal like this. A lot of big cat owners are rather secretive about the fact that they have these animals and some of them are keeping them illegally. DIY spaying is not something that pet owners are willing to get into. So yes, most of these escaped animals are probably capable of breeding.

Ask a bunch of your friends if they've ever seen a mountain lion. If you live outside of Northern Virginia, odds are that you'll find a few friends who have seen one. My next door neighbor saw one feeding on some roadkill down the street from us. Another friend from high school tells me he saw one near Crozet when it ran across the road as he was driving. All of us have seen bobcats in the wild and we know the difference.

Sooner or later, the reality that we are living side by side with large, dangerous predators is going to be forced on to us. Someone will be attacked or killed, or a cougar will be shot by a hunter. Deer populations continue to climb, providing plenty of food for this population to expand with. The issue can only be ignored for but so long. Virginia would do well to face up to what we have on our hands, decide exactly what kind of relationship we want with these animals, and implement policy to make that happen.