The state game agencies need to prepare themselves for more incidents like these going forward. Based on what we have been seeing in Midwestern states over the past 15 years, we had considered confirmations in these states to be just a matter of time. We are not surprised by the Tennessee and Kentucky cougars. Confirmation of cougars in Midwestern states, where they had once been extirpated, is no longer rare and is becoming almost a routine experience. The recent cougar confirmations in Tennessee and Kentucky appear to represent a continuation of the increasing trend of male cougars dispersing from established western populations into the Midwest.
To our knowledge, this is Tennessee's first cougar confirmation in recent history. The confirmation took place in Obion County, which is in western Tennessee, approximately 80 miles west of Nashville and only a few miles east of the Mississippi River on the border of Kentucky. The Cougar Network, whose researchers study mountain lion range expansion, noted the sighting's potential significance: Tennessee allows people to have captive mountain lions, but there were none that they knew about in that region, he said. A mountain lion has not been confirmed by state authorities in Tennessee in perhaps 100 years, he said.īiologists are looking for physical evidence such as tracks or other trail cam images in an effort to get more information, he said. Tennessee wildlife officials are still in the process of confirming the camera sighting, but Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency spokesman Don King said Tuesday the photo appears to be legitimate. The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources said they believe the Bourbon County mountain lion shot by their officer was not a wild animal, while biologists outside the state have said the evidence suggested it may have indeed walked into the state from its likely South Dakota origins.
19 on private property in a county bordering on Kentucky will no doubt further the speculation on the origins of a mountain lion shot and killed by in Kentucky by wildlife officials last year. A trail camera in far northwest Tennessee has captured an image of a mountain lion, providing further potential evidence of the big cat's reclamation of its former range in the eastern United States.
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