Cougar caught on three Northland trail cameras
Yet another cougar has moved across the Northland, heading east into Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.Trail camera photographs taken in northern Douglas County on July 25, in Iron County on Aug. 30 and near Ontonagon, Mich., on Sept. 8 appear to show the same collared cougar, said Adrian Wydeven, a wildlife biologist for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.Wydeven said all three photographs were reported to DNR staff several days after the photos were taken, so there’s been no chance to gather DNA evidence to confirm it is the same animal.
“But considering we don’t get many confirmed cougars like this, and to have more than one with a collar and an ear tag ― that would be unlikely,” Wydeven said.The three sightings of a single animal reveal something about the number of cougars and the number of cameras, he said.“It tells me there must be a whole lot of these cameras out in the woods for this to show up three times. If there were more cougars, they would be showing up, too,” Wydeven said. “It’s getting to be an animal can’t sneak around at all in the woods any more without having its picture taken.”
With apparently hundreds ― maybe thousands ― of trail cameras out there snapping photos, this is only the second confirmed cougar in the past two years. That tells Wydeven there are not a lot of the big cats roaming the Northland.While several cougars are reported each year to natural resource officials in Minnesota,replica watches new york, Wisconsin and Michigan, few sightings are verified. Even when photographs are reported, most turn out to be other animals such as bobcats or fishers, Wydeven said.
The recent sightings constitute the first confirmed cougar report in northern Wisconsin since early 2010, when a cougar was spotted and confirmed with DNA evidence in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan before moving even farther east. That cougar amazed wildlife experts by showing up dead in June, hit by an SUV in Connecticut. It’s believed to be the farthest-roaming wild cat ever documented, more than 1,600 miles from its probable birthplace in South Dakota’s Black Hills.
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