{"id":5690,"date":"2012-03-17T08:00:01","date_gmt":"2012-03-17T12:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=5690"},"modified":"2012-03-16T15:18:37","modified_gmt":"2012-03-16T19:18:37","slug":"keep-your-wild-pigs-weve-got-cougars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2012\/03\/17\/keep-your-wild-pigs-weve-got-cougars\/","title":{"rendered":"Keep your wild pigs, we’ve got cougars!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remember the debate over wild cougars in the North Country over the past few years?<\/p>\n

Jonathan Brown (parts one<\/a> and two<\/a>) and Brian Mann<\/a> have both tracked the trail of testimony, anecdotes and evidence. (Or lack thereof.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Cougars (Puma concolor) are back in Ontario. Photo: Art G., taken at Philadelphia Zoo.<\/p><\/div>\n

Well, investigators have been checking for proof of wild cougars in Ontario too and one verdict is in: they’re here. (Make that “they’re back” in historic terms.)<\/p>\n

As this Ottawa Citizen article <\/a>reports,<\/p>\n

OTTAWA \u2014 A four-year Ontario study confirms what many rural residents felt sure about: cougars are again living wild in Ontario.<\/p>\n

Officially, the big cats were considered to have been wiped out by the early 1900s all across Eastern Canada.<\/p>\n

But a major research effort has documented tracks, fur, photos, DNA, scat (droppings), and hundreds of sightings \u2014 some of them by trained biologists.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe evidence from this study provides proof that cougars live in Ontario; however it does not indicate the origin of these animals,\u201d the study concludes.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t address Quebec directly, but notes that the cats are in Eastern Ontario and like to roam.<\/p>\n

The study period was from 2006 to 2010.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The study was authored by Rick Rosatte, a biologist with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Trent University. The Citizen article reports his findings can be found in the Canadian Field-Naturalist. A pdf of that report is found at their website, here<\/a>.<\/div>\n
Hmm, maybe Ontario (and Quebec’s?) wild cougars stand at the ready to help repel any spread of the feral pig situation? (Or is the St. Lawrence enough to do that?) Stay tuned!<\/div>\n
Lastly, modern slang for the term ‘cougar<\/a>‘ means comments like this one\u00a0 are inevitable (from “Ottawa Guy 67” in response to the Citizen article):<\/div>\n
\n

Anyone who spent a night pub-crawling through the Byward Market could have told you they never left…<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember the debate over wild cougars in the North Country over the past few years? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[880,6693,5638,6695,6694],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5690"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5690"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5695,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5690\/revisions\/5695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}