Eastern Cougar extinct, no longer needs protection, says US conservation agency
Eastern Cougar extinct, no longer needs protection, says US conservation agency
The US Fish and Wildlife service has called for the eastern cougar to be removed from endangered species list after four-year review confirms their extinction
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Western cougar cubs. Their eastern cougar cousins have not been sighted since 1938 according to a US Fish and Wildlife Service review. Photograph: Kevin Schafer/Getty Images
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Eastern cougars that once roamed North America from Canada to South Carolina are extinct and no longer warrant federal Endangered Species Act protections, US wildlife managers have said.
The proposal to remove so-called eastern cougars from the list of endangered and threatened species comes nearly 80 years after the last of those mountain lions was believed to have been trapped and killed in New England, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Cougars, also known as panthers and pumas, were once the most widely distributed land mammal in the western hemisphere, but extermination campaigns have seen the large wild cats eliminated from roughly two-thirds of their original range, federal wildlife biologists said.
The Fish and Wildlife Service in 2011 opened an extensive review of the status of eastern cougars, cousins to mountain lions that still roam western US states and the imperilled Florida panthers.
More:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/17/eastern-cougar-extinct-no-longer-needs-protection-says-us-conservation-agency
