Scientists Found an "Extinct" Cougar in Canada

In July and October 2003, scent posts in Fundy National Park, New Brunswick, collected hair that came back cougar. It was the first solid evidence of the big cat in a province where it had been written off for generations, and the two samples did not come from the same cat. This video follows the long argument over the eastern cougar. Bruce Wright of the University of New Brunswick, who published The Ghost of North America in 1959 and spent his life arguing the cat was still there. Canada's endangered listing in 1978, the 180 New Brunswick reports that were set aside, the Juniper tracks of the early 1990s, and the move to data deficient in 1998. Renee Wissink and the Parks Canada scent posts at Fundy. The twist inside the laboratory: one Fundy cat carried a North American mother line, the other a line from Central or South America. Donald McAlpine of the New Brunswick Museum and the case that any cougars in the province were released captives or wanderers. The US Fish and Wildlife Service's 2011 verdict that the eastern cougar was extinct, and the young male that walked from the Black Hills of South Dakota to Connecticut three months later. And Melanie Culver's finding that DNA cannot tell an eastern cougar from any other North American cougar. Fundy National Park lies on the unceded land of the Mi'gmaq. Canada never declared the eastern cougar extinct. Sources used in this episode: Lang, Tessier, Gauthier, Wissink, Jolicoeur and Lapointe, Northeastern Naturalist, 2013 · Bertrand, Kenn, Gallant, Tremblay, Vasseur and Wissink, Canadian Field-Naturalist, 2006 · Parks Canada, Fundy National Park · US Fish and Wildlife Service, Eastern Puma review, 2011, and delisting, 2018 · Hawley et al., Journal of Mammalogy, 2016 · Culver, Johnson, Pecon-Slattery and O'Brien, Journal of Heredity, 2000 · Cumberland and Dempsey, Canadian Field-Naturalist, 1994 · Stocek, Canadian Field-Naturalist, 1995 · Wright, The Ghost of North America, 1959, and The Eastern Panther: A Question of Survival, 1972 · COSEWIC · New Brunswick Museum · CBC New Brunswick The Frozen Record covers Canadian finds the accepted record got wrong, and the evidence that later corrected it. #EasternCougar #Cougar #MountainLion #NewBrunswick #FundyNationalPark #ExtinctAnimals #Wildlife #DNA #Canada #NatureDocumentary