Are there cougars in the Southwest Michigan? DNR says it has yet to see proof, but hundreds of people report sightingsBy Aaron Aupperlee, The Kalamazoo Gazette, found at MLive.com
December 21, 2009
File photo of a cougar.PINE GROVE TOWNSHIP — Standing on her back porch just north of Gobles one summer morning in 2008, Mann Eytcheson saw something strange pop out of the woods and into the field.
At first she thought it was Max, her son’s golden retriever, but Max lives in Kalamazoo and her son was not out visiting. She grabbed a pair of binoculars.
“I looked again, and I said, ‘Wow that’s too big for Max,’” she said. “It turned and looked right at me.”
It had the face of a cat and moved like a cat, Eytcheson said, but it was about 9 feet long with a 4-foot-long tail. She said she is certain it was a cougar.
Reported sightingsHundreds of people in Southwest Michigan claim to have seen cougars.
Michigan Citizens for Cougar Recognition, a group started six years ago by local attorney and Van Buren County Commissioner Denise Noble, has catalogued nearly 200 cougar sightings in Allegan, Van Buren, Kalamazoo and St. Joseph counties. Add in Barry, Cass and Berrien counties, and total cougar sightings reported in Southwest Michigan jump to 412.
Allegan County had the third highest number of reported cougar sightings in the state, with 62. Van Buren County came in fifth, with 58. Kalamazoo County was seventh in the state, with 54.
Noble said Southwest Michigan’s large deer population and open tracts of land lured cougars from out west into the area.
“I think we definitely have a population here,” Noble said. “I don’t think it is that we have more cougars. I think it is that more people are willing to report and be part of the process.”
Reported sightings in the area date back to the 1800s, but the bulk of them have been since 2000. In Kalamazoo County, according to Noble’s data, cougars have been spotted crossing U.S. 131, in rural areas near Gull Lake and Climax, and in the city, at the intersection of Douglas and Mosel avenues and near Wheaton Avenue and Oakland Drive.
Noble said people have reported seeing cougars on golf courses and traveling along the Kal-Haven Trail. But no one has found verified cougar tracks or snapped a picture of a cougar.
Upper Peninsula cougarsThe Michigan Department of Natural Resources recognizes the presence of cougars in the Upper Peninsula but not in the Lower.
In November, the department verified two sets of cougar tracks found near DeTour and Gulliver and confirmed that a trail camera had snapped a photo of a cougar in Bruce Township.
Proof of the large cat’s existence below the Mackinac Bridge still eludes Steve Chadwick, a DNR wildlife biologist operating out of the Crane Pond station, in Cass County. Chadwick has received specialized cougar training.
Many of the tracks found by people in Southwest Michigan turn out to be large dog tracks, Chadwick said. Bobcats, which can be one and a half times the size of house cats but are still smaller than a cougar, account for most of the sightings, he said.
Chadwick said the presence of cougars in Southwest Michigan would not surprise him, but he is waiting for proof.
“At least in Southwest Michigan, we have not been able to confirm anything at this point. I have done a lot of investigations, and typically it turns up to be something else,” he said. “We don’t have the tracks. We don’t have the scat. We don’t have the kill site. All the things that would prove cougars in Southwest Michigan, we don’t have. These animals are not phantoms or ghosts. They would be leaving some sign.”
In 2007, after a flurry of reported cougar sightings in Southwest Michigan and in the western Upper Peninsula, Chadwick and another DNR biologist went to New Mexico for cougar tracking and identification training. The DNR sent two more biologists the next year.
Evidence or not?Skeptics of the DNR say the department has suppressed and covered up evidence of a cougar population in the Lower Peninsula to avoid acknowledging the presence of a predator and to avoid paying for a cougar management program, Noble said. Noble started Michigan Citizens for Cougar Recognition six years ago because when she called the DNR, a person on the phone denied the existence of cougars in Michigan, she said.
But Noble said she has recently been impressed with the steps the DNR has taken, such as sending biologists to New Mexico.
Noble does not think managing cougars will cost the state lots of money. She wants the presence of cougars recognized so that the state can start educating people about them. She said the more people know about cougars, the less likely they are to shoot or injure the animals.
Chadwick said the state would be able to find money from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or other avenues to fund a cougar management program if it came to that, but first the state would need to establish that there is a cougar population. DNR field offices do investigate claims of cougar sightings and tracks, he said. If someone thinks they have seen a cougar, they should call a DNR field office, he said. If someone finds a possible cougar track, they should take a picture of it with a ruler or other type of size reference next to it and send it to a field office.
“We need to be able to prove that we actually have the animals that we are going to manage,” he said. “We’re not suppressing anything. What we are doing is, as we get good, solid leads and evidence that we can confirm that, yes, this is cougar, then we are releasing it.”
Since seeing what she believes was a cougar last summer lurking about her Gobles property, Eytcheson thinks the proof is out there.
“I don’t like the idea of the DNR poo-pooing the whole thing,” she said. “I’m not blind and not stupid, and know what I saw.”
RELATED CONTENTTop 10 counties for cougar sightingsMichigan Citizens for Cougar Recognition keeps track of cougar sightings on its Web site,
www.michigancougar.com. These sightings are not verified by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
1. Delta (94)
2. Emmet (75)
3. Allegan (62)
4. Leelanau (61)
5. Van Buren (58)
6. Oakland (56)
7. Kalamazoo (54)
8. Kent (53)
9. Berrien (49)
10. Calhoun (48)
( St. Joseph County had 21 sightings.)
Source: Michigan Citizens for Cougar Recognition
Tips on cougarsCougars are not dangerous, said Denise Noble, of Michigan Citizens for Cougar Recognition. But Michigan residents need to know a few safety tips for living with the cats, she said. For example:
- Never run from a cougar. The cat’s instinct is to chase.
- Make yourself look as big as possible.
- Do not bend over in front of a cougar. It simulates a deer feeding and gives the cat an opportunity to attack.
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