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Cougars and the DNR

The Jackson Citizen Patriot
Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Citizen Patriot, 2005
All rights Reserved. Reprinted with Permission

If there really is a Parma puma in the woods, sooner or later there will be a primeval conflict: Cat vs. human. The question is, what then?

From cat-human encounters out West, it appears that the only permissible excuse for hunting down and killing a cougar is when a human being has been mauled or killed. That's because the animal is listed on the federal endangered-species list. But is that really the trigger that people in Jackson County want? Judging by the turnout of 250 people at a recent public forum at the Western Schools' Community Arts Center, the answer is probably a firm "no." They'd rather prevent the worst from happening.

Yet that consensus has yet to penetrate the thinking of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Its public posture is a dispassionate yawn. A cougar (or cougars, as some believe) has not taken up residency in the Parma area simply because Felis concolor Linnaeus does not inhabit Michigan. Don't bother us with the evidence, folks, because we gave a conclusion firmly in hand.

Considering that indifferent posture, it is curious that the DNR maintains a Web site listing the many species of mammals, insects, plants and other life forms that are threatened or endangered. The cougar is listed as endangered -- not as threatened or extinct.

But how can the cougar be endangered and nonexistent at the same time?

We make the point merely to highlight the inconsistency of the DNR position. Perhaps it's time to take the cougar seriously. That doesn't mean we advocate a small army of hunters be dispatched to "take out" the problem.

It simply means that the development of a protective policy demands that the DNR quit denying the obvious and start discussing cougar sightings seriously with the good folks in western Jackson County. What are their options?

Lacking that, this is a local problem. And we are unaware that any local government in Jackson County lists the cougar as endangered.

Michigan Cougar