Eastern cougar declared extinct, to be removed from list of US endangered species

AN AMERICAN big cat has been declared extinct. But what led to it being wiped from the planet?

A captured male cougar looks out of his cage in Discovery Park in Seattle, Sunday, Sept. 6, 2009. The cougar apparently lived in Seattle for more than two weeks and forced the city's largest park to close was captured early Sunday and returned to the wild, state wildlife officials said. The cougar was immobilized with a tranquilizer in Discovery Park after hunting dogs treed it, Department of Fish and Wildlife Capt. Bill Hebner said. (AP Photo/Kevin P. Casey)

IT HAD been known across North America as “the ghost cat”, having been rarely spotted in decades.

And wildlife authorities think they know why — it’s been extinct since the 1930s.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service have today declared the eastern cougar extinct, and is pushing for its removal from US Endangered Special Act protections.

Eastern cougars were declared endangered in 1973, even though the last known records point to one killed by a hunter in the US state of Maine in 1938, and another in New Brunswick, Canada, in 1932.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service’s lead scientist for the eastern cougar, Mark McCollough, said the animal has likely been extinct since the 1930s.

The big cat, also known as the eastern puma, once proudly roamed land across Canada and as far south as South Carolina. Numbers started dwindling in the 1800s when Europeans arrived and killed the predators to protect their livestock.

This isn’t the first time the service has declared the eastern cougar extinct — it also announced it in 2011.

“The US Fish and Wildlife Service conducted a formal review of the available information and ... concludes the eastern cougar is extinct and recommends the subspecies be removed from the endangered species list,” the service said at the time.

“Only western cougars still live in large enough numbers to maintain breeding populations, and they live on wild lands in the western United States and Canada.”

The demise of the eastern cougar has also been linked with the destruction of forests for wood, which drove away the eastern cougar’s primary prey: whitetailed deer.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service will accept comments on its plan to delist the eastern cougar until August 17.

Kim Chandler from the US Fish and Wildlife Service getting up close and personal with a cougar — not an eastern cougar — in Seattle in 2009. Picture: AP / Kevin P. Casey