Section A · Page 6
The University Daily Kansan
Tuesday. March 28. 2000
Wild or not, mountain lions may be a potential danger
This mountain lion was seized from a residential home by the Topoka Animal Control. At the Prairie Park Nature Center, 2730 Harper St., the lion watches and listens for potential nexus in early March. Photo by J.M.Dalley/KANSAN
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Thor Holmes is collection manager at KU's Natural History Museum. His training as a biologist makes him a professional skeptic. But he said reports kept coming in from credible observers such as Swearingen,
Escaped pets
"He knows a big cat when he sees one," Holmes said. "Probably there are some big cats out there."
He said Kansas is a much better place to be a mountain lion than it was 50 years ago. There are more deer, and more and thicker woods.
Holmes said any big cats in northeast Kansas were probably escaped or released pets. But he wouldn't rule out a natural population of cougars. There are wild cougars living in Oklahoma, and heavily wooded river valleys such as the Kaw are excellent corridors for the movement of wildlife.
Marty Birrell, director of the Prairie Park Nature Center in Lawrence, is convinced there are cougars on the loose in rural northeast Kansas.
"There's no doubt about that," she said. "We've taken casts of their tracks."
State wildlife officials are skeptical. They say most of the big cat reports are bogus.
But in the last 15 years, cougar sightings have increased, said Bill Busby, associate scientist with the Kansas Biological Survey. Busby said it would take good photos or a dead cougar to get the state to confirm a sighting. The lack of road-killed cougars is what makes him skeptical. Motor vehicle accidents are one of the most common causes of cougar deaths.
There are areas in northeast Kansas where cougars could survive, Busby admitted. Any place with a substantial deer population and cover, from which the big cats could ambush prey, could support them.
"They might be here, or they might not be," Busby concluded.
Christiane Roy, fur-bearer biologist with the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, gets a lot of cougar reports in her office, too. She said any cougars in Kansas are probably escaped or released pets. A lot of people in the state breed
cougars and keep them as pets, and she doesn't think wild cougars are migrating across the Great Plains from the Rocky Mountains.
Charles Lee, a wildlife specialist with K-State Research and Extension in Manhattan, Kan., said the state couldn't support a breeding population of the big cats. They need too big a range — about 100 square miles — and there aren't enough big wild areas in Kansas to sustain a cougar population. There are too many roads and too many people.
But that doesn't stop the sightings from rolling in. Lee gets about one a week.
Lee agreed it's possible that what people are seeing are escaped pet cougars.
Sightings to continue
"Go into any bar or coffee shop and they'll tell you." he said.
But, whatever the reason, Lee expects the reports to continue.
After a drink or two, some will even tell you that state wildlife officers are releasing wild cougars to control the state's growing deer herd.
Bob Mathews, chief of information and education for the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, said the rumors were absurd.
"We'd be tarred and feathered if we tried to import wild mountain lions into the state," he said.
Rob Ladner, enforcement supervisor for the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, asked, "Where
For additional information about mountain lions, including audio and video clips from the KUJH broadcast See www.kansan.com or www.digitaljayhawk.org
More information
are we going to get that many mountain lions?"
Issuing more deer licenses would be safer and raise money, he said.
And predators don't control prey populations, anyway, said Prairie Park Nature Center's Birrell. When prey populations decline, predator numbers go down too. So releasing wild cougars wouldn't control the size of the deer herd.
If anyone is releasing cougars in Kansas, it's pet owners, said Kevin Kuenzi, a veterinarian in Perry who treats pet cougars.
Even declawed cougars are dangerous, Kuenzi said, and could survive in the wild. He knows his patients' strength from treating them
"People in their stupidity release them," Kuenzi said. "They think Perry and Clinton lakes are a good place for them."
"I've had a few times when I was worried about getting out of the cage—and they were just playing." he said. "You're sure not going to outrun one. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody got hurt."
The state doesn't prohibit ownership of cougars but many counties and cities, including Lawrence, do. And it's illegal to release them, said Rob Ladner, law enforcement supervisor for the Department of Wildlife and Parks.
Nevertheless, exotic animals such as cougars are readily available in Kansas and Missouri, said Lynn Halford, animal control officer with the Topeka Police Department.
State officials said there were 70 to 80 people with state permits to breed cougars.
Why state law permits this industry is not clear. Wildlife experts all agree that people should not keep cougars as pets. Cougars are hard to handle and zoos don't need any
Mountain lion sightings near Lawrence
Arletta Flory, Overbrook resident, spends a lot of time on the horseback riding trails near Clinton Lake. She has seen cougars several times during the past five or six years near the southwest end of the lake. Her most recent sighting was last fall. She also has seen half-eaten deer partially covered with dirt, which is consistent with cougar behavior.
Tom Sweairingen's neighbor, Jeff Kurtz, saw a cougar near the Lawrence airport about the same time as Sweairingen's sifting.
■ John Hughes, another neighbor of Swearingen's, didn't see the cougar, but heard what he was sure was the screech of a cougar.
Jean Anderson saw a cougar near her home by Perry Lake about a year-and-a-half ago. She said she knew something was out there.
"The woods exploded with deer," she said.
Then she saw a cougar.
"At first I thought it was the longest dog I ever saw in my life," Anderson said.
But then she realized it wasn't a dog, but a bit cat.
"When I got home, her eyes were big," Price said.
Anderson's neighbor, Linda Price, took plaster casts of couragTrack near her home in May 1996. The courag visited while she was cut, but her daughter saw it.
"The scary thing is you can't hear
William Bailey, an orthopedic surgeon in Lawrence, saw a cougar as he drove on Douglas County Road 458 near Clinton Lake about four years ago. He said he was sure it was a cougar.
Her daughter told her she had just seen a cougar. They found tracks that were three-and-a-half inches wide and lacked claw marks — classic cougar tracks.
more cougars.
"I think there's one or two of them out there," he said
Although wildlife experts have yet to confirm that cougars are living in Kansas, they agree that if they are, there is some risk to humans. Attacks on people have increased as people have moved into cougar habitat in the West. Running may trigger at attack because that's what a cougar's favorite meal, deer, does.
Earlier this month, Birrrell had Nikita, a young male cougar abandoned by his owner, at Prairie Park Nature Center until she found him a permanent home.
But the two-and-a-half foot-long, 30-pound cat was very interested in the joggers and dogs on the running trails by the nature center. His ears perked up and he leaned forward when they went by.
"They have instinctive hunting behavior," Birrell said. "Those that don't starve are going to be the cream of the crop of the released cougar population."
Nikita was seized by police in Topeka. He had hardly ever been outdoors, and like most pet cougars, his front claws had been removed.
But Nancy Schwarting, director of Wildcare, a wildlife rehabilitation organization in Douglas County, didn't think declawed former pets could survive. She thinks cougars are probably out there but that they're wild cougars.
these guys coming," Birrell said.
And released pets could be more dangerous than wild cougars because they're used to people and don't fear them.
All that notwithstanding, the risk is statistically small. Lynn Sadler, executive director of the Mountain Lion Foundation in California, said that in the past 100 years, cougars have killed only 16 people. In the same period, 300 people have been killed by bees, 150 by dogs, and 100 by rattlesnakes.
"Even spiders, goats and jellyfish pose a greater risk than cougars," she said.
Although the risk may be statistically insignificant, Sadler admitted, "It's significant if it happens to you."
Birrell agreed that cougars aren't a real safety risk for outdoor recreation in Kansas yet.
"But there's definitely something instinctive about the fear of being eaten," she said. We're definitely below the coumar on the food chain."
Whether cougars have really returned to Kansas fascinates people, Holmes said. It's the most common question he gets when he gives a wildlife presentation, whether the audience is professors or Cub Scouts.
"Big cats are sexy," he said. "It's an adrenaline rush to see a mountain lion."
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