WORLDWIDE BIG CAT TALES :.

MYSTERY BIG CAT LOOSE IN ILLINOIS

  Posted June 10.05

(Original headline: Some strange sightings )

AFOLKEY - Two farmers in rural Afolkey say they have spotted what appears to be a lion or a cougar twice within the past week, sparking interest among state wildlife officers who took to local fields Thursday to investigate.

A 2- to 3-foot-tall long-bodied animal resembling a brown African lion was seen wandering along a fence row at the farm of Dennis Wells on E. Hickory Grove Road Wednesday morning, Wells said.

"It was about 8:30 a.m. I was out chopping in a hayfield ... when I came around a corner, I looked along the fence line and I saw it standing there. It looked at me. I stopped the tractor and immediately thought, 'What is this?' Over the years farmers see critters, but I've never seen anything like this," Wells said.

He described the animal as tall, long, slender, tawny in color and having a broad, triangular face with dark fur around its face - fur that looked like a mane, he said, and a "J-hooked" tail, possibly bushy on its end. It was about 40 rods or 200-plus yards away when he saw it, Wells said, about one-half mile from his house.

"He was big. He was brown. It took me by such surprise. You question yourself right away. It's something that's kind of out of place around here," Wells said, adding he had no reason to falsify such a report and feared people would think he made it up.

"But (later) I saw his prints, other hunters (who came out after word got around) saw the prints. They were large prints. I am 90 to 95 percent sure that I saw some kind of cat out there," Wells said.

Wells is unsure of exactly what kind of cat he saw - especially because the animal reminded him more of an African lion than a mountain lion. And it wasn't until he recalled days later hunters saying they saw a deer carcass nearby, up in a tree last fall, that he decided to tell somebody.

He called state officials.

A similar animal was also sighted by farmer Perry Schlueter on Pleasant Hill Road about two miles from Wells, Friday, Wells said.

Kerry Schlueter confirmed a cougar-type cat was seen on his family's land as well, but said it didn't have a mane as described by Wells.

Cougar sightings are increasing in number lately, but most are undocumented, DNR officials say.

"We get a lot of calls for the timber wolf and the mountain lion and other species that in a blink of an eye cross a road," said state Conservation officer Steve Beltran.

Beltran visited the Wells farm Thursday to investigate.

He said the tracks he's looking at - more than a week old - appear to be coyote tracks, not cat tracks. They were deep tracks from a heavy animal but not consistent with a feline, Beltran said.

He said the investigation is ongoing. The site of coyote tracks does not rule out a mountain lion presence, he said.

"But the physical evidence obtained today does not support the presence of a mountain lion," he said.

Wells said what he saw is no coyote.

"I know what a coyote looks like. I was confident when I saw (the officially-studied paw prints) (Thursday) that they were smaller than the ones I saw a week ago." Wells said he's heard of another sighting, off Juda Road, north of Rock Grove, in an area called Gil's Timber.

Cougar advocates, however, predict the mountain lion is returning slowly to the Midwest after being eradicated by settlers in the late 1800s.

In recent years in Illinois, two cougars have been documented - and widely reported - one in New Boston, 168 miles from Afolkey. That cat was found after being killed by a bow and arrow hunter, in December 2004. Necropsy reports on that animal did not show signs of captivity.

And in July 2000, in Randolph County, farther south, a cougar was killed by a train. That animal's last meal was a white-tailed deer, DNR officials reported.

These finds, and a map showing 16 documented sightings in Minnesota and 15 documented sightings in Iowa, Missouri and Illinois are posted on Cougar Network, http://www.eastern cougarnet.org/index.html.

Media reports are increasing: in May, "Time" magazine ran a short story speculating that species-protection programs in western states are likely leading to a repopulation.

And in January 2005, National Geographic Channel reported the Cougar Network's findings along with a June of 2004 sighting in Oklahoma, where the first cougar found in a century, in Red Rock, had wandered almost 700 miles. That cat, also killed by a train, was wearing a tracking collar and had roamed to Oklahoma from Wyoming.

Despite the mounting evidence of expansion, investigators remain skeptical until they have hard evidence: a photo, a kill, irrefutable tracks or other evidence, said Regional Wildlife Biologist Tom Biesel.

"I'd heard reports that this (at the Wells farm) is an African lion too. We deal in fact, and we pursue facts and we pursue verified reports. The history of cougar sightings in Illinois is mostly one of wild goose chases," Biesel said.

He said Illinois doesn't have a resident, breeding cougar population.

"I got involved in the find in the New Boston region. What is possibly apparent is there may be some range expansion going in with some wild populations. That said, at this point in time in Illinois, the likelihood of any animal seen in the wild was likely a captive animal that somehow escaped. That's what the data is showing us."

He said there is evidence of all kinds of exotic animals - hundreds - held illegally in the Midwest.

"In Rockford in the past couple of years, there was a tiger discovered in the some guy's apartment."

Biesel said wildlife officers keep open minds, but deal in facts.

"We never say never in wildlife. There's rational explanations. It didn't fall out of the sky."

Some facts about cougars
Otherwise known as: mountain lion, puma, panther, Yuma puma, Florida panther, eastern cougar, Wisconsin puma, Texas panther

The currently accepted scientific name for the mountain lion is Puma concolor Linnaeus. Thirty subspecies are generally recognized worldwide. Thirteen of these are found in North America north of Mexico.

The Eastern cougar historically ranged throughout the eastern United States from Michigan and Indiana east to the Atlantic coast, and from southern Canada south to Tennessee and South Carolina, though today eastern cougars may be extinct. No breeding populations have been positively identified within the historic range since the 1920's, there have been many unconfirmed sightings.

The western variety is not federally protected or endangered.

Cougars are shy, quiet, nocturnal, and like to eat deer, rabbits, skunks and other small mammals but do not attack livestock or humans unless confronted or cornered, a rare experience, leading to difficulty in humans seeing them. They are polygamous, grow to a length of about 5 feet with a 2- to 3-foot tail; the throat, the insides of the legs and the belly are white and the tip of the tail is black. Weights range from more than 100 to 200 pounds. A mountain lion's range is from 20 to 100 square miles. Mountain lions tend to avoid roaded areas and areas inhabited by humans.

Source: United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service; Worldbook Encyclopedia

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