In news that will likely shatter your hopes that 2018 will be a year of hope and excitement: scientists have declared that the eastern cougar is extinct. The big cats used to roam the North American landscape, however they haven't been seen in the late 1930s.
While the US Fish and Wildlife Service pronounced the species to be gone from our planet in 2011 after an evaluation, it appears the federal body has made it official now.
In a statement, the service says: "This information shows no evidence of the existence of either an extant reproducing population or any individuals of the eastern puma subspecies; it also is highly unlikely that an eastern puma population could remain undetected since the last confirmed sighting in 1938.
"Accounts suggest that most eastern cougars disappeared in the 1800s, killed out of fear for human and livestock safety and were victims of massive deforestation and overharvesting of white-tailed deer, the cougar's primary prey.
Advert
"Therefore, under the authority of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (Act), as amended, we remove this subspecies from the Federal List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife."
The relevant group in Canada has not commented on the possible existence of the eastern cougar in the country since a 1998 study which expressed serious doubt over the species living anywhere except for Florida.
National Geographic highlights the idea that eastern cougars have had a complicated history in the US as they were ruled as different to Western mountain lions, the North American cougar, and the Florida panther, despite being genetically the same.
These different animals were separated scientifically because they had different fur coats for example, however at the end of the day they were all still belonging to the same species.
Advert
Despite there being no official sightings of the eastern cougar since the 1930s, there have been plenty of unofficial ones in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, Southern Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Connecticut, New York, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Virginia, Arkansas, Vermont, Alabama Louisiana, and Tennessee
The problem with these is that it's difficult to declare whether the person saw an actual eastern cougar or the other animals regularly associated with it. A cougar was killed by a car in Connecticut and original thought to be an eastern breed, however it was ruled to be from the west and had walked a casual 1,500 miles from its usual habitat.
Sources: National Geographic
Topics: World News, Animals