First there were
bears and then bobcats, but now mountain lions?
It may seem so as an
off-duty officer with the Ohio Division of Wildlife has reported to
agency officials that he observed what may be a mountain lion July 29 in the
Wintersville area of Jefferson County.
This location is near the
3,032-acre Fernwood State Forest.
The closest large
community in the region is Steubenville, located along the Ohio River.
Fernwood State
Forest contains the remnants of coal extraction and is considered
remote and rugged with many small lakes and ponds and consists of
mature mixed hardwoods.
Wildlife Division
officials and local police are in the area, scouting for any sign of
the would-be mountain lion, also commonly called a cougar or panther.
Agency officials
further say that it's District Three (Northeast Ohio) Office in Akron
will field reports of any similar potential sightings. Those
sightings can be called in the District office at 330-644-2293.
Likewise the agency
sent safety tips to area schools and such for distribution to
athletic and cross-country teams, the material noting how to avoid
conflicts.
While little is
known as to whether this sighting is genuine or not the Wildlife
Division also is reviewing its records of people licensed to own such
animals.
Oho recently
stiffened its laws regulating exotic wild animals including the
requirement of site inspection of any facility and additional
permitting protocols.
And even though
periodic and scattered reports of mountain lions in Ohio have cropped
up in virtually all instances the to-date consensus has been either
the creature in question was misidentified or else was deliberately
released or an escaped animal.
State biologists do
say that if the sighting was genuine and the animal was a wild
mountain lion then in all likelihood it was young male. That is
because young male lions and young male black bears both share a
trait that once sent on their way by its mother the animal is looking
for new territory to set up a home range.
Yet if the lion did
exist and was seen that does not mean it is still in Jefferson
County. Mountain lions have extensive home ranges and can move as far
as 20 miles per day, said Jamey Emmert, public information specialist
for the agency's District Three office.
Ohio is within the
species' original per-European settlement range, says the national non-profit
Cougar Fund.
The Cougar Fund says
no known population of cougars exist in the state, having been
extirpated long ago.
“The closest known
breeding east-to-west population of mountain lions is northwest
Nebraska, and north-to-south breeding population is the Florida
panther,” said Penny Maldonado, the Cougar Fund's managing
director.
That being said,
Maldonado also noted that the Wildlife Division is spot on by saying
how young male mountain lions occasionally wander far from their
natal homes.
“It's called
dispersal,” she said.
As far as a mountain
lion posing a high risk to humans, such is rarely the case, says
Maldonado.
“There have been
just 20 known human fatalities by mountain lions over the past 120
years,” Maldonado says. “That's not to diminish the tragedy in
each of these cases but many more children are killed from falls out
of shopping carts than by mountain lion attacks.
"The greatest threat
to us and to the cats is our own fear.”
For further
information about the Cougar Fund, contact Maldonado at
penny@cougarfund.org.
- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
JFrischk@Ameritech.net
Jeff is the retired News-Herald reporter who covered the earth
sciences, the area's three county park systems and the outdoors for the
newspaper.
During his 30 years with The News-Herald Jeff was the recipient of more
than 100 state, regional and national journalism awards. He also is a
columnist and features writer for the Ohio Outdoor News, which is
published every other week and details the outdoors happenings in the
state.
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