Apr 30 2008
Cougars in the News…Again
The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the cougar killed in Chicago has been linked by DNA to genetic material recovered from several Wisconsin-area cougar sightings:
A 124-pound cougar shot by Chicago police earlier this month is the same wild animal that was spotted in southern Wisconsin in January, Cook County officials said today.
DNA taken from the cat killed April 15 in Roscoe Village matches genetic material found in Rocky County, Wisconsin, following a cougar sighting there on Jan. 15, authorities said.
The test results also confirm that the male cat shot in Chicago was a wild, free-roaming cougar, not an escaped exotic pet, officials said.
But more tests are still being done to determine where the big cat originated. The nearest wild population of the predator to Chicago is in South Dakota, experts have said.
“These findings provide a glimpse into the life of this wild cougar and are critical pieces of a larger puzzle, which for us and other agencies is where it came from and how and why it reached an urban area,” Dr. Donna Alexander, Cook County animal control administrator, said in a statement.
The Chicago Tribune has additional reports on the school threat connected to the Chicago cougar shooting:
School officials at Audubon Elementary School in Chicago’s Roscoe Village neighborhood met with concerned parents Friday morning and beefed up security after receiving a threatening letter that connected the school to last week’s cougar shooting.
The school is about one block from where the cougar was killed.
The letter made threatening statements regarding the Spring Gala and Audubon Family Fun Fair and is believed to have been written by someone who is angry about the cougar shooting, Principal John Price said in a letter sent home to parents. Price said the school would go ahead with the Spring Gala with additional security but had not made a decision about the Fun Fair.
The Traverse City Record Eagle reports that staff at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore visitor’s center have obtained a display specimen of a cougar. It will be placed in the center so that park visitors can more accurately identify cougars:
Sleeping Bear officials this month borrowed a cougar mount from Michigan State University Museum to educate park patrons about the elusive cat — the subject of hundreds of reported sightings at Sleeping Bear and across lower Michigan.
“It is one of the predators that are historically in this area. We thought it would be nice to have something here so they know what they are reporting,” said park natural resources chief Steve Yancho.
The mounted cougar, originally from Nevada, stands over 2-feet tall and 6-plus feet long. It will be on display this summer in the main exhibit area of the Philip A. Hart Visitor Center on M-72 in Empire.