By Dr. Robert Thorson
The case of cougars in Connecticut is getting curiouser and curiouser.
Of course they exist. One became roadkill earlier this month on the Wilbur Cross Parkway in Milford. Though this particular animal may have escaped or been released from illegal captivity, it does not change the fact that it was prowling about the suburbs before being struck by a car. And given its lean appearance in the state Department of Environmental Protection photo, it likely would have been interested in and capable of having you for lunch.
Eyewitness accounts have been accelerating in frequency, especially in southwestern Connecticut, with recent sightings in Fairfield, Greenwich, Easton and Trumbull. I heard the loud local buzz June 18, when prowling Westport in search of stone wall photographs for a lecture later that day.
Cougars exist in the records of endangered species biologists working for private conservation organizations and state and federal agencies. On the hot seat are Mark McCollough, the lead scientist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who recently declared the eastern mountain lion officially extinct; and Paul Rego, the go-to person for the Connecticut DEP. Though both conclude that resident breeding populations of this subspecies do not exist, they concede that cougars are indeed present as transient individuals or populations, likely brought to the region by humans.
Cougars exist in our psyches because we desire it to be so. Famously, Henry David Thoreau wrote “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” By “wildness,” he referred to a state of being that acknowledges the potency, resilience and fecundity of wild nature, which thrives with astonishing beauty and complexity whenever essential conditions are met.
We remain connected to this force through our powerful emotions for survival, struggle, stealth, sex, satiety, sloth and the satisfactions of living in the moment. Anatomists know that beneath the hypertrophied anterior prefrontal cortex of Homo sapiens lies the brain of a great ape, and beneath that, the brain of what paleontologist Neil Shubin calls our “inner fish.”
That humans prefer mystery over fact was recently confirmed for me while wandering around a UHaul parking lot in New Britain. Each of a dozen trucks bore a graphic design symbolizing a state. The symbols for Rhode Island and my home state of Minnesota were the Newport Tower and the Kensington Runestone, respectively. Both are alleged to have mysterious Viking connections, despite compelling evidence to the contrary. It’s like the persistent belief, expressed by some people, that there are resident populations of eastern cougar. People simply will not believe what they’re told by competent professionals.
Theoretically, cougars should exist here because everything they need is here. As I write, their favorite prey, the white-tailed deer, are grazing in the thick woods of my backyard. Back in Thoreau’s era, this was an open pasture bordered by stone walls, the deer were shot for venison, and predators who marauded livestock were killed. The result was the extinction not only of wolves, but of cougars.
But things are quite different today. Delicious deer are abundant, wooded rock outcrops are common and suburban residents don’t protect themselves with rifles. Hence, with natural populations of cougars moving eastward, it’s only a matter of time before they reach Connecticut, if they haven’t done so already.
By my reading of the curious case for Connecticut cougars, this animal: was widely present in the flesh during the Colonial era; was unofficially declared extinct during the 1930s; reappeared on government paperwork in 1973 as an endangered species; and was declared officially extinct in 2011.
Clearly, the joy and consternation of cougar sightings is a mixed blessing.