News-Sentinel photo by Paul Efird Don Linzey, a biology professor at Wytheville Community College in Virginia, looks over evidence he has collected supporting the existence of cougars in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

By Morgan Simmons, News-Sentinel staff writer
September 22, 2002

WYTHEVILLE, Va. - At first glance the two photographs on Don Linzey's desk appeared to capture nothing but underbrush and shadow.

With his finger Linzey, a biology professor at Wytheville Community College, traced the outline of a cat-like animal that was approximately 30 feet from the camera, but camouflaged behind the summer foliage. In the first photo a tree blocked the head, but part of the body and a long tail could be detected in the center of the frame.

The second photo showed the animal running away, and here the back of the head and most of the body were more visible. Linzey explained that the two photos were taken in July from a rental cabin near the boundary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Linzey said the vacationing couple that shot the photos believe they saw a cougar, and he thinks they might be right.

"There's really not another animal in the park that has that basic body shape and size," Linzey said.

Twenty-four years ago Linzey began tracking down cougar reports in Virginia. Four years ago he expanded his investigation to include the 800 square miles of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Linzey is the author of two guidebooks, "Mammals of Great Smoky Mountains National Park," and "The Mammals of Virginia." He is also the lead mammalogist for the All-Taxa Biodiversity Inventory under way in the Smokies.

While the prevailing wisdom holds that wild cougars were eliminated throughout the East (except for southern Florida) by the 1940s, sightings of these elusive predators have persisted, particularly in the Smokies, 20 percent of which have never been logged and remain an undisturbed refuge.

Linzey said cougar sightings inside the park have increased "astronomically" over the last eight to 10 years.

He said that up to 1995 the National Park Service had received about 50 reports of cougars inside the Smokies park and that this summer alone there were seven sightings during an eight-week period between May 14 and July 17.

"Nobody put a lot of confidence in these reports in the past," Linzey said. "The Park Service simply does not have time to check them all out."

In order for Linzey to investigate a cougar sighting, it has to carry weight. He looks for sightings that involve more than one observer, and he takes into account the observer's experience with animals and the outdoors.

Once a sighting inside the Smokies passes the credibility test, Linzey marks its location on a map with a color-coded pin. The oldest sighting on the map - marked by an orange pin - dates back to 1946 when a female cougar and cubs were spotted near the Chimneys Campground.

According to Park Service records, there have been four cougar sightings in Cades Cove this summer, the first occurring in June on the north side of the Loop Road near Tater Branch.

The observer, a man from Ohio, took a long-range picture of the cougar out in a field that failed to produce an identifiable image. According to the report, the man wanted to get closer, but his wife wouldn't let him.

The next day another sighting occurred at the same location, and this time the observer saw what looked like a cougar catch a deer fawn.

Of the two other Cades Cove sightings this summer, one occurred on July 14 near the Cooper Road Trail close to Abrams Creek, while the other occurred July 16 a half-mile east of the Cades Cove entrance at Laurel Creek Road.

Linzey said another cougar sighting occurred the first week of June when a man and his wife spotted what appeared to be a cougar while driving on U.S. Highway 441 just north of the Sugarlands Visitor Center. According to the report, the animal was fawn-colored, weighed about 75 pounds and crouched at the edge of the road before walking slowly in to the woods.

Linzey said that in this case the observer was a veterinarian who had treated cougars as part of his practice.

"How can you tell somebody like that they didn't see what they saw?" he asked.

One of the most credible sightings recently reported in the park occurred on May 14 along Little River Road about one mile west of the Sugarlands Visitor Center. The observer was Rebecca Shiflett, a professional nature photographer from Knoxville who has documented the park's elk reintroduction and is employed by Discover Life in America as the official photographer for the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory.

Shiflett said the sighting occurred at 6:25 a.m. while she was driving to an early morning wildflower shoot.

"It was a 40-mile-per-hour zone, but I was driving below that because I knew I was approaching a game trail where I see deer, turkey, and coyotes all the time," Shiflett said.

"So I'm coming around the curve and watching my speed when I see this cougar about 75 to 100 meters in front of me standing 5 feet off the pavement and on the left side of the road where they had mowed. He's looking right at me, and when he heard my car, he walks to the tree line; he doesn't run."

Shiflett described the cougar as weighing about 75 pounds with round ears, short thick legs, tawny highlights, and a long tail. She said at first she was hesitant to report the sighting to park officials even though she was sure of what she saw.

"I didn't have a photograph, and there was nobody with me," she said. "But I felt somewhat vindicated after I learned there have been several other cougars seen and photographed in the park this summer. From now on, I'll keep a backup camera with a telephoto lens."

Park officials say that two months after Shiflett's sighting, another cougar was reported at the same location at 8:45 p.m.

In 1973 the growing number of cougar sightings throughout the East prompted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to include the eastern cougar on the Endangered Species List.

But during the early 1980s a comprehensive field survey of the Southern Appalachians by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to produce hard evidence of cougars, although possible deer kills, scat and scrapes were identified.

So what are people seeing? Kim DeLozier, wildlife biologist for Great Smoky Mountains National Park, said the number of cougar sightings in the park over the last 20 years has him asking a slightly different question.

"I think people are seeing big cats. The question is where did they come from?" DeLozier said. "Most states believe these are captive cats that are released after they grow up and get too hard to handle. Is there a remnant wild population out there that has been hidden for decades and is starting to re-surface? I think that's a possibility, but not a big possibility. More likely, I believe these are captive cats."

Linzey said as far as the question of where the cougars are coming from goes, he wouldn't go out on a limb.

"My goal," he said, "is to obtain positive evidence that cougars are in the park and, ideally, to prove they're breeding there."

Linzey said his best photographic evidence so far comes from video camera footage taken in January 2001 by a couple from Florida who, while hiking along a creek bed in the park's Greenbrier section, saw what appeared to be a cougar staring out of a rocky cave at close range.

"As far as I'm concerned, that's the first picture image ever taken of a cougar in the park," he said.

With the help of park volunteers, Linzey has set out 30 "hair snare" devices in areas where the most reliable cougar sightings have occurred. Consisting of roofing nails attached to patch of carpet, the snares are placed about 2 feet off the ground and smeared with a special cougar-attracting paste developed in Montana.

Hairs caught in the nails are sent off to a laboratory in British Columbia for DNA analysis. Linzey said he is running into the expected problem of black bears ripping the snares off the trees, and that out of the eight samples he sent off three weeks ago, one was positively identified as belonging to a bear.

He said that while most of the hair samples couldn't be identified through DNA analysis because they were too damp and moldy, one sample of cream-colored hair taken at Davenport Gap was described as looking like it came from a cat.

In addition to the hair snares, Linzey and the Park Service also have mounted automatic infrared cameras along select game trails in an attempt to photograph a cougar.

"With an animal as rare as the cougar, you don't go about searching haphazardly. I hope if I'm ever fortunate enough to see one, I have someone with me."

Morgan Simmons may be reached at 865-342-6321 or simmonsm@knews.com.

Copyright 2002, Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. Click for permission to reprint