Talk:North American Cougar/Archive 1

Needless capitalization of "cougar"

The word "cougar" is not a proper noun, yet it seems to be capitalized throughout this article. This is pointless capitalization of a common noun and is poor grammar. I'm changing all references to lower case. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.73.75.192 (talk) 13:55, 19 November 2009 (UTC) From other Wikipedia page discussions, capitalizing the species common name is listed as a Wikipedia format, so it's 'correct', although I see it both ways on a lot of pages.--Paddling bear (talk) 21:42, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

picture

I got the ok from the sight that some of this text was from to use it on Wikipedia.--ÑøζζłεΜαńFile:Homsar small.png 19:12, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Cougars in Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Area

When I was home on leave from Active Duty (U.S. Army Military Police) in the late winter of 1996 I was driving home (with car windows up) and a cougar crossed the road in front of me and walked through a side then back yard and disappeared in the treeline at the end of the yard. My passenger also saw the animal and we reported the incident the next day to a Hamilton County (Ohio) Park Ranger. I was sure that the Ranger would think that I was a cracked-pot but thought it was important to report this incident as I believed that someone may have released a pet cougar and it may be dangerous. I was going from Saylor Park (Cincinnati) to Delhi Township, the road I was driving on cuts through a heavily wooded river hill area called the Western Wildlife Corridor. Anyway, I described the animal and provided the Park Ranger with details of the sighting and to my surprise he did not think that I was a nut but rather took my report and then referred me to a Mr. Bill Riechling who I then contacted and he made a report of the sighting for a Cougar Society (can't remember the name). To my further surprise I was informed that there have been several sightings in this area of cougar and that they believe that it is not a single animal but rather a reminant population that never died out and is transient within the "Wildlife Corridor". I personally do not know what the truth is about the cougars in this area other than that I and my friend saw one in February of 1996; wether it was a wild animal or an abandonded pet I can't confirm. From the information that was given to me by the Park Ranger and Mr.Reichling the "authorities" really do not want the general population to know about the existence of these cougars. I am hoping that someone might have information on the research about cougars in the Cincinnati, Ohio area and knows of a reference that is reliable enough to cite in this article. I know that first-hand experience or research is not approriate to reference in a WP article so I will not edit the main article to include any of my experience until I can substantiate the edit with a reference. P.S., I was not intxicated in anyway when I saw the cougar- I was totally sober and I was a Military Police at the time who was well trained in observation. Thanks for your help! --Paulsprecker (talk) 02:18, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't doubt your sighting, although there are a LOT of people who report house cats, otters, and a host of other species as cougars (often claiming they are black panthers). What I do doubt is that it was a member of a remnant population that never went extinct in OHIO, not the most ruggedly rural of states. Transient cougars (usually a males that travels widely outside an established population) have shown up 100s of miles away from documented populations without any sightings in between (South FL into N. GA for example). While there are several groups that try to prove cougars have always existed in the east, one is more credible (to me, judging by members of their board) http://www.cougarnet.org/bigpicture.html. They classify them by type of evidence and take a more objective view.--Paddling bear (talk) 22:00, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Eh?

Despite a wealth of hard evidence, sightings of cougars in the eastern United States are not as uncommon as they once were.

This sentence doesn't make sense. What is the "hard evidence" here? Oddity- (talk) 05:21, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Deletion/restoration

the copyvio version of this article has been deleted; i replaced it with a stub. Does not currently contain any copyvios. --He:ah? 18:47, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

The story about 37 cougar removed from the wisconsin forest is bogus. I contacted Adrian Wydeven of the Wisconsin DNR who in turn contacted the biologist (Don Reiter) of Menominee County, who confirmed that this DID NOT OCCUR. I delted it from the text but someone put it back in with a comment that it needs a source. I caqn provide the letters from both biologists. I am a professor of biology with a research interest in dispersing cougar in the MidWest. 199.165.141.58 16:29, 9 March 2007 (UTC) James Mahaffy

Hrm.... looking back, it looks like a vandal added that information, and removed a bunch of other information. I'll make amends.... - UtherSRG (talk) 16:45, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Merge from Florida panther

When some two dozen subspecies of Cougar were listed, the Florida Panther was one of those subspecies. Nowadays, according to Wozencraft in MSW3 following Culver, only six subspecies are listed. The North American Cougar includes the Florida Panther now. - UtherSRG (talk) 02:54, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I could go either way, but I don't see why animal articles should be limited to accepted subspecies. If a population is distinct (which the Florida population is, if for no other reason than geography) and noteable (which it is, as it is crtically endangered), why can't it have its own article?

If you do merge, then you will have much more content on the Florida population then the rest of the NA population, which seems odd. Toiyabe 19:50, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Geography alone makes the Florida panther distinct enough from the rest of the North American cougar population to justify having a separate article. In additionally, there is the fact that the Florida population is in so much greater peril. With fewer than 90 cats remaining, the Florida panthers are the only population of cougars remaining in eastern North America. In contrast, the western populations are more diverse, and, relatively, more stable. SRBirch922 21:11, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Geography means very little. Since these populations are now considered conspecific, the endangerment of the Florida population is much less of a concern. The species lives on in other parts of the continent and is doing quite well. However, neither your argument nor my response has anything to do with whether these should be one article or two; there is no reason that all of the existing information in the Florida article can not be merged into the species article. - UtherSRG (talk) 06:31, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

There is no one definitive academic standard for subspecies designations - the standard is what's accepted by the biologists who work closely with a species. Many factors are considered in addition to similarities at the molecular level described by Culver. In the case of the Florida panther, because of its endangered status, the definitive decision on subspecies designation will be made by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), as the primary recovery agency. Neither the biologists who conduct panther monitoring and research nor the Recovery Team appointed by USFWS to plan its recovery have dropped the panther's subspecies designation. It's an unwarranted move to do so on Wikipedia or to merge the Florida panther entry with the North American cougar entry. User:ecover 03:18, 30 May 2007 (UTC) ---ecover

I might agree with you if it was only Culver saying it isn't a subspecies. However, Mammal Species of the World, 3rd edition (Nov 2005), also uses a short subspecies list, following Culver. Also, you are incorrect about where official status comes from. It does not come from the USFWS. That's the source for US policy, not for definitive academic standards. - UtherSRG (talk) 10:47, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

But Culver's work is the only basis for the MSW3 designation, and she considered only molecular markers. I didn't mean that USFWS sets academic standards, but the agency does control the status for protection under the ESA. There's no reason for Wikipedia to rush to judgment before USFWS and the IUCN evaluate the evidence.User:ecover 15:20, 30 May 2007 (UTC) --ecover

Apparently Wozencraft likes to take most recent work and ignore convention or politics (judging by the red wolf page discussion and this one). While I'm not saying it's incorrect, it might confuse people when they read everywhere else that red wolves are Canis rufus and Fl panthers are a subspecies. It's an odd choice for a 'canocal reference' for wikipedia.--Paddling bear (talk) 22:11, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm ambivalent, and leaning toward oppose. Wikipedia is not paper. The Florida panther is of legimitate interest to people in its own right and there is distinct literature concerning it. Put another way, even if it isn't a subspecies, it can still have a page IMO. What we should probably do is remove the taxbox from it and bring the page inline with the MSW3 (e.g., remove the mention of the defunct Texas subspecies). Thus I agree with anon, but for different reasons. And to be clear, the USFWS does not make the "definitive decision"—the IUCN does, AFAIK. (Its odd incidentally, that IUCN lists the entire NA population as critically endangered, when it doesn't appear to be.) Marskell 11:44, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

As noted above, it makes sense to wait for USFWS and IUCN to evaluate the evidence before dropping the subspecies designation on wikipedia. The Culver/MSW3 opinion is based strictly on mitochondrial DNA and is not definitive. User: ecover 15:20, 30 May 2007 (UTC) --ecover

In my opinion the USFWS is irrelevant to the ultimate designation (though, of course, we can mention what their position is). We should use IUCN or MSW, depending on which is most current—for now, that would be MSW3. For the big cats, IUCN is still relying primarily on Nowell, K. and Jackson, P. (1996), and we have no idea how long we might be waiting for them to confirm the absence of North American subspecies. Marskell 07:00, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

As above, molecular findings by Culver, even if they're accepted by MCW3, are insufficient for Wikipedians to reclassify an endangered animal. Length of time a subspecies has been geographically distinct, phenotypic characteristics, behavioral adaptations and other factors are considered as well. Molecular biologists are not trained or qualified to consider these factors, which should be evaluated and reported on by qualified panther experts before posters to Wikipedia restructure listings. Such unseemly haste to override panther recovery biologists could be seen as trying to create a public consensus to pressure agencies to reclassify, based on political rather than scientific reasons. I haven't checked the Preble's meadow jumping mouse page, a similar case where property rights advocates in Colorado and Wyoming pushed to have the mouse classified based on a single molecular study by Rob Roy Ramey III, but there are similarities with the panther case. Ramey's study was later discounted by an independent review panel. To my knowledge, the only panther expert who has dropped the coryi designation (in a conference abstract unrelated to taxonomy, without discussion or explanation, not in a peer-reviewed paper) has potential financial conflicts of interest as a consultant to Florida developers. His habitat and viability work have been discredited by an independent review panel, referenced on the main panther page. So I would advise patience. Ecover 22:15, 5 June 2007 (UTC) ecover

Allow me to say that when I first saw the Florida panther in pictures it was quite distinct from other north american pumas in appearance. Recently (some years ago) I've read from journals that the local population of panthers in Florida was in such a grim decline that there was not enough panthers for a vital breeding population so there was taken the initiative to rejuvenate the population by interbreeding with other related "subspecies" of northern puma, and in that journal it was presented a florida panther possibly a hybrid (being handled by a cute researcher or breeder in a cute pose) that though it had the distinctive characteristics of the florida panther they were more prominent than the older pictures I had seen. May be that the genetic resemblance of the present Florida panther population is because of that interbreeding? --Draco ignoramus sophomoricus (talk) 05:48, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Some characteristics mentioned in early reports are inbreeding, such as kinked tails. The white spots on the back was later found to be scars from heavy tick loads. I do know that many photos are captive animals that are supoosed to be FL cats but have an undetermined ancestry. About the hybrids, FWC reports state that only a few cats were brought from Texas and allowed to stay out to breed for a specific amount of time before they were recaptured and removed from FL. Not sure the effect on visual appearance of cats, but I don't know what I'd tell from a few photos.--Paddling bear (talk) 22:11, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Panther Designation.

I have expanded information about the name of this cat. When the Panther's range included the entire Southeast it was called a panther over that entire range. If one visits museums in Tennessee and the Carolinas, old photos of panther use that designation. The fact that the Florida Population is the only one that currently uses the term is due to the fact that is the the only currently existing population. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.32.6.189 (talk • contribs).

This page has a number of serious problems. Most stem from the fact that the aggregation of all subspecies of North American cougars into a single subspecies, proposed by Culver in 2000 and recognized by MSW3 in 2005, has not been adopted in the scientific literature, which still refers to the original subspecies as distinct, using pre-Culver nomenclature. The trinomial proposed by Culver for North American cougars, Puma concolor couguar, is the subspecies name that has historically been applied to the Eastern cougar, thought to be extinct or near extinction since about 1900. Kerr, 1792, is the trinomial authority for the description and naming of the Eastern cougar - it cannot be applied to the North American cougar without annotation by an additional authority. IUCN, USFWS, ITIS, ICZN, other listings, and both popular and scientific literature use this trinomial and authority exclusively to refer to the Eastern cougar, which is classified as critically endangered. The taxobox for North American cougar should not point to the IUCN listing for the Eastern cougar - that link should be moved to the first mention of Eastern cougar in the text. The North American cougar as a proposed catch-all subspecies has no declared endangered status, as listing agencies have not addressed the proposed taxonomic revision. Also, "panther" is not the universally-used common name for the Eastern cougar - note the "Eastern Cougar Foundation" and the preferred common name in listings. These issues should be clarified on the North American cougar page, so that readers are not confused. Given the amount of information and interest related to the Eastern cougar, it might be a good idea to retain a separate page for the Eastern Cougar and keep the North American cougar page as a general discussion of the proposed taxonomic revision, perhaps listing the original subspecies and showing the proposed regrouping. I will leave it to editors who have been working on this page to make any changes and clarifications, and will check back sometime next week.Ecover 16:38, 27 June 2007 (UTC)