HUFFINGTON
09.30.12
WILD KINGDOM
cougars, to begin contemplating
how to officially deal with the issue. Missouri, for example, recently established a Mountain
Lion Response Team through its
Department of Conservation, and
it has developed extensive public
education programs.
“The return of mountain lions
to Missouri is exciting to some,
but frightening to others,” the
state’s Department of Conservation Web site notes. “Because
mountain lions have been absent from our state for so long,
most Missourians have never
seen them and don’t know much
about their behavior.”
The site goes on to remind
worried folks that they are more
likely to be killed by a car, or by
lighting or even by a dog, than by
a mountain lion.
Nielsen says he’s working with
state officials in Illinois to begin
drafting similar management and
outreach programs there. “We’re
working on a management plan
for cougars and wolves and black
bears as well, just being pro-active and thinking about the future
and having some policy and some
thoughts on how we might deal
with this issue, should it become
more important in the future.”
Is it too soon for Connecticut?
“State agencies are strapped.
State budgets are strapped,”
Nielsen says. “They have time to
work on things that are immediate and important, so it’s really
hard for a state agency that says
‘We have no confirmations of cougars in our state’ to actually spend
time and money on it when it’s
not a pressing issue.”
Nielsen adds that he would like
as much as anyone to uncover unambiguous evidence that cougars
are repopulating places like New
York or New Jersey or Connecticut, but that, beyond a handful of
very rare and unusual confirmations — and Florida’s struggling
population of about 100 cats —
there is virtually no hard evidence
that mountain lions are re-colonizing the Eastern United States.
But Nielsen also says he knows
what it’s like to not be taken
seriously, given that he began
studying cougar presence in the
Midwest more than 10 years ago,
when no one thought the animals were an issue there. “People were laughing at me. Back
then there was just the occasional sporadic confirmation and
they would say, ‘Ha, cougars in
the Midwest, yeah, whatever.’