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Revised to Puma concolor spp. cougar.

Florida Panther, Puma concolor coryi (Bangs, 1899). Everglades National Park, Florida, USA. Photo by David L. Govoni ©2012

www.nps.gov/ever/naturescience/floridapanther.htm
www.floridapanthernet.org/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_panther

This cat entered my camp in site 1 at the Grass Shack. It was an almost 15 minute encounter. Weirdly I once posted a thread in the forum about seeing a cougar and not being able to get a picture. I got more than I bargained for for sure. I definitely made the NPS Rangers morning very exciting and gave them five minutes of hair-raising video.

This male mountain lion - a migrant from South Dakota - was infamously struck 41-miles east of Greenwich, CT. This was the first verifiable documentation of a cougar in Connecticut since the 1890s. The attributed location and time is from where it was struck by a car. There is no breeding population of cougars in New England, though they historically occupied every continental US state.

Photos supplied with permission from the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection (CT DEEP), Wildlife Division, courtesy of Cyndy Chanaca.
Individual photo credentials: Paul J. Fusco/ CT DEEP-Wildlife

Further reading:

• Mountain Lions in Massachusetts: Distinguishing Fiction from the Facts by Tom French
• Confirmed Reports of Mountain Lions in Massachusetts by the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries & Wildlife (archived from the original)
• Genetic Testing Reveals Mountain Lion Killed in Milford Originated in South Dakota by CT DEEP (archived from the original)

While investigating snow leopard kill sites, we (@otocolobus) encountered two ~5 week old cubs at a secondary den site. Cubs were well hidden in a rock hollow beneath an overhanging Lonicera shrub.

Wonderful to stumble upon concrete signs of successful reproduction springing from Kyrgyzstan's continued commitment to meaningful snow leopard conservation.