Minnesota Public Radio
“All Things Considered” Program
Interview With ECN Co-Founder Mark Dowling
Greta Cunningham: Its 6:23, you are listening to “All Things Considered” on Minnesota Public Radio, I am Greta Cunningham.
Joggers in Duluth claim to have spotted three cougars near a residential apartment complex yesterday morning. The Department of Natural Resources hasn’t confirmed the sightings. The agency says about 50 cougar sightings are reported each year, but most of the animals turn out to be large housecats or even yellow Labrador dogs.
Mark Dowling is more optimistic about such sightings. Dowling is one of the founders of the Eastern Cougar Network, a group of wildlife enthusiasts who have gathered evidence of cougars in the Midwest. He says the reintroduction of the cougar is one of the most amazing big carnivore comeback stories in history.
Mark Dowling: The experts are telling us that the western cougar populations are probably higher than they have ever been, due to high deer numbers and changes in habitat. It appears that these cats are starting to spill over, that they have been expanding their range eastward in the western states. In the 1980’s, they re-colonized South Dakota. In the 1990’s, they started showing up increasingly in the Prairie states of North Dakota, Nebraska and Oklahoma. Also in the 1990’s, they started to show up, with some regularity, in the Midwestern states from Minnesota all the way down to Louisiana.
GC: Now many people in the scientific community are very skeptical of cougar sightings and sort of dismiss them to the realm of Bigfoot and UFO’s, how do you respond to this?
MD: I would agree with them. As far as evidence goes, visual sightings by the general public tend to be very unreliable, that’s why we only consider verified sightings to be evidence; body of a cougar, a good picture, tracks verified by a professional. So I would agree with them that there has been a UFO element, or a Bigfoot element to this. What we have been doing at ECN is networking with the different state, federal and provincial wildlife agencies to put together the hard evidence, to find out what is really going on.
GC: Now you Mr. Dowling, aren’t a trained expert on cougars, why are you so interested in them?
MD: I have been interested in all types of wildlife since I was a kid. I just turned 41, so I guess I am middle-aged now. When I was growing up in Connecticut, deer were rare, and there wasn’t a lot of wildlife. Over the years wildlife has rebounded, now we have black bears, moose, coyotes, bobcats. Eagles have come back. Wildlife has resurged in Connecticut, and I have come to find out that it has resurged across the country. Most of the news you hear about the environment is doom and gloom, but really, there is a big story there that people haven’t noticed, and that is the recovery of North American wildlife. The cougar is just the most dramatic and charismatic example.
GC: Now what eradicated the cougar in the first place?
MD: Cougars were persecuted, like wolves, because they preyed on livestock and killed deer & other big game. In the 1800’s, the country was much more agricultural, so there were more people on the land and there was less tolerance of large carnivores.
What we are now seeing in large parts of the Prairie states, in some of the states, there are regions that are depopulating, and they are returning to a more wild state. People also have more tolerance for cougars. Most states used to have it classified as a bountied predator, or vermin. Now they have classified it as either protected or as a game animal. Together with the expansion of prey populations, this has allowed them to rebound in numbers.
GC: Now some people have argued that the cats being spotted in places like Minnesota are just escaped pets, do you agree with that?
MD: That’s always possible. One of the things we do on our website is winnow-out any animals where there is evidence that they are former captives. But we think, in working with biologists in the west, and with the state agencies, we think that most of these cats, at least the ones we are seeing, are wild. There have been a number of road kills, there have been a number of cats shot, from east Texas all the way up through the Midwest. Most of these road kills, there is evidence that these cats have been living in the wild, eating deer, that type of thing. A lot of the captive cats you see would be de-clawed, or they would have South American genes. Under DNA analysis, you can determine if an animal is of North American or South American origin, and a lot of the pets tend to be of South American origin. So most of the bodies that have been recovered in the Midwest have indicated that these cats, at least the ones that we have seen evidence on, are native wild cats.
GC: Mr. Dowling, you have spoken to a lot of scientists about cougars in Minnesota, and what is the information they have told you?
MD: In talking with some of the top biologists in the country, a lot of them think that it is not really a question of if cougars are in Minnesota or some of the other states, it’s a question of when. A lot of these biologists are very bullish, that the conditions have changed to the point where cougars are going to re-colonize the Midwest.
GC: Mark Dowling is from the Eastern Cougar Network, he lives in Connecticut.