Mountain Lions-Thunder Bay

National Geographic was following a 2 year old polar bear to dart and collar him finding his seal kills along the way. they spotted a big male Barren ground grizzly way out on the pack ice and tranquilized him.Found he was scavenging of the dead seals then killed and fed on the polar bear.Also jaguars are in Texas and Utah.
 
just today i was shown a trail cam picture of one taken on a property just north of barrie, alas as mentioned above, the MNR called the fellow a liar
 
How do I put this so the slow kids can understand?

When a population of animals (in this case cougars) increases favorable available habitat in a given area decreases.

In reaction to this surplus animals are forced to leave and find other suitable habitat to live in.

If the habitat is available (area and prey species) the animals will stay and establish a population.

I cant seem to enable the "etch a sketch" function here for the real slow ones here.
 
Jaaska said:
Two mountain lions in a couple of weeks with the first one being 5km from my place which is 30 miles north west of Thunder Bay . I've seen two over the last 40 years but the MNR told me they've been extinct east of Alberta for over 100 years . A dead one was found out in the Boreal Timber Limits just west of town 3 years ago . Can someone make these links clickable . I don't know how . Thank You .



https://www.tbnewswatch.com/local-news/cougar-purportedly-captured-on-kaministiqua-trail-cam-3171535

https://www.tbnewswatch.com/local-n...ting-in-the-thunder-bay-area-2-photos-3231826
Click to expand...

The MNRF has acknowledged for years that cougars exist in Ontario.

The one and only question is if (and by extension how big) there is a breeding population

https://www.ontario.ca/page/mountain-lion-cougar
 
Anyways, this is why MNRF takes cougars reports with a massive grain of salt. Unless you think theirs some massive conspiracy going on?

https://www.thespec.com/news/2008/03/18/mythic-hamilton-cougar-actually-a-coyote.html

Mythic Hamilton cougar actually a coyote

Hamilton's elusive Ghost of the Forest isn't dead yet.
The Ministry of Natural Resources says the 'cougar' that died Sunday after being struck by a car on Hwy 403 was, in fact, a coyote.
Linda King from Brantford had reported to police that she had seen a wounded cougar struggling to stand near the eastbound lanes of the highway near the Lincoln Alexander Parkway as she headed to work at McMaster University Medical Centre around 7:15 a.m.
"I knew it was a cougar right away," said King, adding that she had read an article that Friday about a cougar being spotted in Brantford.
She phoned the Ontario Provincial Police a few hours later where a dispatcher told her that the animal was a cougar and had been put down. King later told a newspaper that the OPP had confirmed the cougar sighting.
But wildlife experts say that the police were too quick to cry cougar.
Stuart Kenn, president and research co-ordinator for the Ontario Puma Foundation said that he was surprised that the OPP had confirmed the animal without conferring to himself or the MNR. He wondered aloud if they could tell the difference between cats and dogs.
Kenn said that while there are believed to be approximately 500 wild eastern cougars in Ontario, the possibility of one being in Hamilton is bizarre.
"They just don't have the habitat in Hamilton. They generally live near the forest, they need a large area to roam with a high deer population. Hamilton is a concrete city with pollution. The probability of seeing them is absolutely remote," he said.
Kenn said that his organization gets numerous calls from people claiming to have hit a cougar.
"People say that cougars are hit all over Ontario but it doesn't happen. In the past 30 years a cougar has never been hit by a vehicle in Ontario," he said.
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The mountain lion found dead near Thunder Bay had "western DNA," it was found beside a road, the speculation is that it was transported there and dropped off.

I personally know four people who swear that they have seen cougars near Sudbury/Manitoulin... but I do "know" these people, none of whom are what I would consider credible, either due to a lack of knowledge or a lack of character.

There are reports of exotic animals popping up in strange places regularly and they usually find that they were once exotic pets or otherwise in some odd-ducks personal collection. I have spent more than five decades in Northern Ontario woods trapping, hunting, guiding and have never seen a cougar or the tracks of a cougar... I would have to see some credible evidence to personally acknowledge that they exist here.

At present, I feel like the Ontario Cougar crowd are the kindred spirits of the BC Bigfoot crowd.
 
geologist said:
In 1985 I was working in Beardmore, ON and a local trapper/prospector who was working for me told me when he reported seeing a cougar on his trapline the MNR said he was a liar.
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That's exactly the type of country you'd expect those guys to thrive in. That country around Beardmore is the best part of what is otherwise a long boring highway until you get to Kapuskasing.
 
If any exist at all in NW Ontario it would be where the deer population is suitable to sustain them. Most of NW Ontario's deer herds have crashed (not counting suburban Thunder Bay, suburban Kenora and the very west end of the Rainy River District) and I don't think a cougar can handle a moose very well. These reports are very likely "pet' cougars that have been released or escaped from exotic pet owners. None the less an established population of any new large predator is something I don't want to see here.

Darryl
 
hoytcanon said:
The mountain lion found dead near Thunder Bay had "western DNA," it was found beside a road, the speculation is that it was transported there and dropped off.

I personally know four people who swear that they have seen cougars near Sudbury/Manitoulin... but I do "know" these people, none of whom are what I would consider credible, either due to a lack of knowledge or a lack of character.

There are reports of exotic animals popping up in strange places regularly and they usually find that they were once exotic pets or otherwise in some odd-ducks personal collection. I have spent more than five decades in Northern Ontario woods trapping, hunting, guiding and have never seen a cougar or the tracks of a cougar... I would have to see some credible evidence to personally acknowledge that they exist here.

At present, I feel like the Ontario Cougar crowd are the kindred spirits of the BC Bigfoot crowd.
Click to expand...

Came across the OOD mag article regarding the cougar in question. Being related to southern cats, they cannot rule out that it was not raised or even born in Ontario since they did not have an Ontario cougar sample. It could of even migrated from the Black Hills
.https://oodmag.com/whats-deal-ontario-cougars

It also turns out that Manitoba hit a high last year with cougars.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5867405

I had even came across a 2015 article that the range of the United States cougar can expand into the mid-west in the coming decades. So it looks like the big cat is making a comeback.

Animal are always moving. For some reason Alice the moose left the Adirondacks to travel 400 mile north to Algonquin park. Unfortunately animals do not respect the international borders or even inter-provincial borders especially during these lockdowns.
 
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There were Cougar sightings in Manitoba as far back as 60 years ago. One old fellow that used to drive the roads up to Pine Dock and Matheson Island claimed he saw one in the Beaver Creek area. Others apparently have been seen since.

In Northern Ontario, they have been spotted north east of Sault Ste Marie within recent years. MNR claims they don't exist.
 
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