Wild Mountain Lion in Connecticut!

Yesterday I heard that a 140-pound wild mountain lion was killed on a highway by a SUV on June 11th in Milford, Connecticut. The cougar was a male, possibly looking for a mate. DNA shows it is the same animal spotted in Minnesota and Wisconsin and had the same genetics as the wild population of panthers in the Black Hills of South Dakota. In fact, it is believed that this very lion traveled some 1500 miles to Connecticut.

I remember that a wild panther was killed near the Chicago loop in 2008 (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080417-cougar-shot.html). Last month there were reports of cougar sightings near Canton, Ohio. You hear about such sightings from time to time--but they are almost always universally dismissed as impossibilities.

We rarely saw wildlife in Northeast Ohio as a kid. But in recent years, deer have almost become a plague in many Ohio cities and suburbs; I have seen flocks of 20 wild turkeys in my back yard; I have seen coyotes within the city of Mentor; I have seen two bald eagles flying about 50 feet over my head at Mentor Lagoons beach.

This is an amazing triumph of nature. Daniel C. Esty, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, has said,  “The journey of this mountain lion is a testament to the wonders of nature and the tenacity and adaptability of this species. This mountain lion traveled a distance of more than 1,500 miles from its original home in South Dakota – representing one of the longest movements ever recorded for a land mammal and nearly double the distance ever recorded for a dispersing mountain lion.”

This link from ABC.com has the story and a video of the dead mountain lion:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/conn-mountain-lion-made-long-journey-south-dakota/story?id=14169829