Poised amid the pitch pines, among the flora and fauna depicted on the Sam's Point visitor's center mural, is the most elusive animal rumored to be stalking the Shawangunks: a mountain lion, or cougar. Local lore and sightings on the ridge reach back well into the 20th century, though the last documented wild cougar taken in New York State occurred in Herkimer County in 1894. Despite decades of reports, not a single piece of evidence � a track, a photograph, or the clearest sign, a body � has emerged to support the Shawangunks' sightings.

The conundrum of so many cougar sightings supported by so little evidence is a phenomenon mirrored far beyond the Gunks, from Maine to Georgia and west to the Mississippi River. A cougar appears in the headlights on a deserted winter road in the White Mountains; a state ranger watches a cat take down a deer in the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania; a dead cougar is reported on an Interstate in northern Kentucky, yet, curiously, no tracks are found, no deer carcass is examined, and the road kill � like one reported in 2005 along Route 209 in Marbletown � disappears.

Meanwhile, in the Midwest, cougars dispersing eastward from the Dakotas and Texas are hauled dead into Iowa game agencies, are photographed on random wildlife trail cams in Arkansas and Louisiana, and are hit by trains in Oklahoma and Illinois. One in six Florida panthers is killed on the roads every year. Where cougars live, even in low densities like the Midwest, bodies appear. However, examination of the most recent eastern casualty, a cougar shot in Georgia last November, was found to be a former pet, the first body to surface north of Florida and east of the central Mississippi basin in eleven years.

Are eastern cougars stealthier than their Midwestern and Floridian brethren, dodging millions of vehicles, eluding hundreds of thousands of private game cameras now lodged in our forests, floating like ghosts leaving nothing but startled encounters across the land, or is something else going on? Are these really misidentifications of the cougar's smaller wild cousin, the bobcat, or even odder, housecats? The Eastern Cougar Foundation has been soliciting sightings, examining field-evidence and photographs, and conducting federally sanctioned remote camera studies for ten years. We can't buy a cougar confirmation, and boy, would we love to find something.

Aside from solving one of the slipperiest riddles in North American natural history, we need cougars restored to eastern ecosystems like the Shawangunks' chestnut oak forests. Our rising white-tailed deer population has arrested the chestnut oak's ability to regenerate. Wildflower and tree-seedling understories � home to insects, amphibians, and songbirds � are being denuded and replaced by invasive species and deer-resistant native plants, accompanied by an alarming drop in species diversity. The Shawangunk Ridge Biodiversity Partnership has responded with a three-year, DEC-funded deer management plan. But such hunting initiatives, frankly, have had mixed success, reducing deer censuses, but failing to affect how deer browse � blas� as Holsteins mowing down everything in sight � outside hunting season. Native predators eradicated long ago can help restore habitat, complimenting seasonal deer harvests.

Wolves reintroduced to Yellowstone and cougars restored to Yosemite and Zion National Parks have emerged unexpectedly as ecosystem guardians. Western habitats ravaged by overabundant mule deer and elk are recovering simply with the presence again of predators. Where ungulates began to fear browsing at stream corridors and forest edges � the landscape equivalents of ambush alleys � willows and aspens soon recovered, and with them, beavers, fish, frogs, birds, and butterflies returned. Dubbed by researchers the ecology of fear, this predator/prey dynamic is transforming western ecosystems from moribund, pastoral parks into robust examples of diverse wilderness.

Convinced of their absence, the Eastern Cougar Foundation has shifted its mission of searching for mountain lions to advocating for their restoration to the East's public lands. Whitetail-induced understory degradation and forest suppression has reached crisis levels up and down the Appalachians. The East needs its native big cat back. In California, Colorado, and Florida cougars are thriving in close proximity to human activity. Supported by public tolerance and education, and linked by migration corridors to the Catskill's forever wild Preserve, there's no reason cougars can't make it along the inviting, craggy hump of the Shawangunks.

Christopher Spatz, President of the Eastern Cougar Foundation, has recently completed a year-long study at Minnewaska State Park Preserve. To hear more about his findings and cougars join him at the Sam's Point Conservation Center on Sunday, February 22nd at 2:00 PM. To register for this lecture call Heidi Wagner at 845-647-7989 ext.101 or email [email protected].

COMMENTS about this article (8)