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Morris, Pennsylvania, a speck on the map in southern Tioga County, is well known regionally for its rattlesnake roundup. What most people don’t know is that Morris has its own CSI unit. As in, Cougar Sighting Investigation. Morris resident Kerry Gyekis, a forester and former Tioga County planner, is part of the Eastern Cougar Foundation, a nonprofit based in Harman, West Virginia. Gyekis donates a great deal of his time sleuthing into the hundreds of reported cougar sightings east of the Mississippi River. He is especially interested in Pennsylvania sightings, and though his true believers insist the cougar lives in the commonwealth’s mountains and forests, Gyekis and the ECF have yet to verify the big cat’s existence here. His interest was piqued after spending years working in the woods and as a hunter and trapper. He’d never seen a mountain lion but kept hearing reports all the time. “People were adamant and they weren’t lying to me,” “So, for a period of time in my life, I was really looking for cougars,” Gyekis said. “I would sit in a tree somewhere and try to lure them in. And I got deer, weasels, dogs, coyotes. Never a cougar. But all those years, I kept looking until I finally said, ‘Hey, I need some help here. There’s something wrong here. I’m in the woods more than all of these other people put together and I haven’t seen a cougar.’” Eastward Ho? Like most of those who claim to have seen a cougar, Gyekis fervently wants to believe this “indicator species” and “apex predator” has returned to the Twin Tiers. The few cougars found recently in the Eastern woods have either been released or have escaped from private zoos, which are legal in some states if the animals have proper permits. John C. Gallant shot a wild cougar in 1967 while squirrel hunting in Crawford County, Pennsylvania, but its characteristics matched those of Costa Rican cougars. South American cats have come to be an important source of “pets” for folks with private menageries. There is some evidence, however, that wild cougars may be reproducing in the East. On the ECF Web site under the heading “KY Kitten,” it says in June 1997 a pickup truck hit an eight-pound female cougar kitten on Highway 850 in western Floyd County, Kentucky, which is in Appalachia near the borders of Virginia and West Virginia. The driver also noticed a larger and a smaller shape, probably the mother and a sibling, because the kitten was too young to be alone. The driver took the body to the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, where it was frozen and later analyzed. The kitten lacked most captive-cat signifiers. She had not been declawed nor had she been tattooed, which is often the case for pet cougars. She was not wearing a tag or collar. However, the site says, “DNA analysis indicated that the kitten’s maternal ancestry included genes from South America, pointing to the pet trade . . . but paternal ancestry was shown to be North American. “This kitten is important for several reasons: she was a highway fatality, and biologists claim that if cougars were present in any numbers some would get hit by cars; she indicates that reproduction is going on in the wild; and she exemplifies the mixing of cougars from various origins that is probably occurring in the Eastern woods.” Cougar History An indicator species helps define an environment’s characteristics; its presence means a more natural ecosystem is in place. An apex predator, as the name indicates, is a hunter at the head of the food chain, and the eastern cougar’s extirpation (a fancy word for “wiped out”) was the result of several factors related to its high ranking. It is the largest cat in North America (fourth-largest in the world) and had the greatest distribution of any mammal in the continent until man usurped its top spot. But when the Colonists arrived in the New World, the cougar was a mystery. According to the ECF Web site, the Colonists “were familiar with wolves but had no knowledge of cougars, because cougars live only in the New World. Nonetheless, cougars were quickly viewed with the ancient prejudice that Europeans had against all predators. At first, settlers thought cougars were African lions or leopards (the black phase of which is called panther).” Thus the cougar’s decline was caused in large part by man’s natural fear of large predators, justifiable since he can become their prey but overblown given the rarity of attacks. Second, ungulates are the cougar’s main food source, but if deer, elk, and moose aren’t handy, mountain lions quickly turn to livestock and can just as quickly run afoul of farmers armed with rifles. Third, only nobles were allowed to hunt in Europe, and stalking deer in Penn’s Woods was liberating for the common man. Attendant to that is the simple fact that venison and other game were vital to the settlers’ survival as they pushed westward. Cougars were seen as competitors. The eastern cougar’s demise was speeded up by habitat loss. More people, more farms, more lumbering meant less cover for an animal that needs to carve out a good deal of territory to hunt. And it is a solitary hunter that won’t share its property. It’s conditional, of course, and estimates vary, but a cougar’s range could be more than 500 square miles, a boundary the male cougar marks by scraping together piles of leaves and grasses and urinating on them. As colonization spread and timber harvesting and commercial deer hunting increased, man and mountain lion competed for land and food. Cougars were pests, a nuisance, and they were hunted aggressively. Though secretive and crepuscular animals who are rarely seen in the wild, they are easily tracked down and treed by dogs, an irony since tree-climbing is a natural defense against their main predator, the wolf. Once up a tree, a big cat is target practice, and by 1950 the eastern cougar was presumed extinct. But not in the imagination. In our current culture, the mountain lion is used to name sports teams and brand athletic shoes, but it’s also steeped in ancient mythology and lore. It’s an animal known by an uncommon variety of names: cougar, puma, mountain lion, panther, painter, and catamount. The Nittany Lion. Its agility and grace, its sleek, powerful body, its regal carriage and intense, burning eyes that, at the same time, seem to be coolly assessing its surroundings—all these things make it one of God’s most splendid creations. No wonder people want to believe it still roams the Pennsylvania mountains, and that dozens of believers send photos, video stills and other “evidence” that Kerry Gyekis carefully sifts through, only to tell them, no, that’s not a cougar. It’s a bobcat. Or a coyote. It’s a dog. Or just a house cat. Joining the Team Gyekis started volunteering for the Eastern Cougar Foundation about eight years ago. The ECF’s mission statement, in part, advocates “restoration of viable cougar populations in suitable areas of the eastern and central United States through natural recolonization.” The foundation also educates the public on “basic cougar biology and how to coexist with our magnificent native big cat.” Gyekis does his part by giving an approximately one-hour PowerPoint presentation to interested groups that range from five to 200 people. He is sixty-five years old—but looks twenty years younger—and resembles a less-burly version of Ernest Hemingway. He has the energy level of a washing machine on spin cycle. In addition to his timber-consulting business, he is a world traveler, an avid outdoorsman and kayaker, and a nature photographer. He and Janet, his wife of almost forty years, live on land he cleared in a house his family built from the timber and stones on their property. If that’s not enough, he’s also a novelist whose book Territories was published in 2002. For his presentation, Gyekis starts with a brief bio, feathering in some of the aforementioned information, outlining his Peace Corps duty as an eco-forester in Malaysia, and explaining that he grew up near Pittsburgh. He hunted and trapped extensively in that area as a young man and mentions running into coyote when everybody said they should not have been in western Pennsylvania in the 1950s and early 1960s. This is perhaps an unintentional subtext to the presentation. In other words, just because some experts believe cougars aren’t in the Twin Tiers, it doesn’t mean they aren’t. He graduated from West Virginia University in 1965 with a degree in Timber and Wildlife Management. Four years later, he got a job as a federal forester on Colville Indian Reservation in eastern Washington State. His big-cat fascination began there. “On the reservation, I had my first experience with a cougar,” Gyekis said. “We were doing a timber sale and we were having coffee with this old Basque sheepherder every morning. One morning when we arrived, he was on his horse and he was very angry. A cougar had killed about twenty of his sheep. I got ahold of the game warden, an Indian guy who became a good friend. And I helped him in an attempt to capture the cat. We saw it but were not able to get it in a trap. We got cougar belly fur only. But then I got really interested in that particular species.” The sheepherder’s story, however, brings us to the other side of the coin. Species reintroduction is a touchy issue. There are many groups who feel that predators such as cougars are not some of God’s most splendid creatures. Many hunters don’t feel that way and game commissions often support their point of view. Most farmers with livestock won’t feel that way, no matter how many reparation programs are introduced. Hikers who think they love cougars may change their tune when confronted by a six-foot-long, 150-pound, growling, hissing cat that thinks it has the right of way on the trail. Humans are often curious animals. They move to the woods or camp in the wild to be closer to nature but many are then disconcerted when nature—in the form of foraging bears, deer that chew up gardens and flowers, or timber rattlers that cross their path—intrude on their islands of civilization. They often say they want “nature” but it often means a Disneyfied world where animals are anthropomorphic, where wolves are mean and Bambi is cute. Speaking of wolves, in June 2006, The Christian Science Monitor reported on the ramifications of their successful reintroduction into Idaho. Successful in the sense that the wolves, brought in from Canada, blossomed in their new habitat. Conservationists were pleased but opposition groups, such as the Idaho Anti-Wolf Coalition, pushed “for a voter initiative that would mandate the removal of more than 500 wolves in the state’s backcountry ‘by whatever means necessary.’” A joint state and federal plan was drawn up as a compromise. In it, “the state proposed killing as many as 51 wolves in north-central Idaho in order to increase the elk herds favored by hunters,” the newspaper reported. Coalition head Ron Gillett of Stanley, Idaho, was not impressed. He told the Monitor reporter: “There’s only one way to manage Canadian wolves in Idaho. Get rid of them.” The Cat Map The cougar is also native to much of Central and South America, and though eradicated in most of the eastern United States, a small pocket of Florida panthers live in and around the Everglades, all of which once again points to the lion’s adaptability. “That population in Florida, they say, is between eighty and 100,” Gyekis said. “I suspect it’s probably more. It was down to in the thirties maybe fifteen or twenty years ago; it was going in the tubes. They were becoming inbred, smaller, kinky animals.” Then females from Western states, which have thriving populations, were brought in under the guidance of David Maehr, a biologist on ECF’s board of directors. They now have a regenerating population in Florida. But it’s always difficult to maintain, Gyekis said, because of roadkill and habitat loss. Also, adult male cougars will kill immature cougars without compunction, seeing them as a threat to their dominance and access to females. “Nobody can be in their territory except the female,” he said. “And if there’s a fight over food, they may kill the female.” Which brings Geykis’s presentation to a map of current cougar habitat from another organization, Cougar Network, which describes itself as nonpartisan: They don’t advocate recolonization in the East but also don’t oppose it. Gyekis also described Cougar Network as more “conservative.” For them, “confirmed” cats in the East need pure North American cougar DNA. Cougar Network’s map shows a bright green area that begins at the far edge of the high plains from Texas north to Montana and goes all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Two smaller green patches cover South Dakota’s Badlands and Florida’s Everglades. A concentration of blue and pink dots covers much of the Great Plains. There’s a smattering of dots in the East. The blues represent what Cougar Network defines as Class 1 Confirmations: a dead or captured cougar; photographs and video; and DNA evidence such as hair or scat. The pinks are Class 2 Confirmations: tracks or other tangible, physical evidence, such as prey carcasses, microscopic hair recognition and thin-layer chromatography of scat, verified by a qualified professional. Gyekis, pointing to the map, drew attention to “one big scraggly line going out of Lake Superior and all of the way down to Louisiana.” That’s the Mississippi River, he explained, the biggest obstacle to the Western cougar’s move eastward. "If you look at that really closely,” he said, “it shows one blue on Michigan’s upper peninsula that was hit years ago, but all we have is hair there. Cougar Net only takes evidence that they can substantiate through game commissions. And most of them don’t want it; they don’t want to deal with it. “If you look at Illinois, there are two on the east side of the Mississippi. Those are the only two we’re aware of that have been killed on the east side of the Mississippi. There are probably more but not a hell of a lot.” As the cougar population grows in the West, young cougars will naturally look for land in which to hunt. That’s pushing the big cats eastward and into Canada. A South Dakota cougar population has gown so large, Gyekis said, that hunting cats is now legal there. “They’re too numerous. And a lot of the ones coming east through the North Country are coming from South Dakota. One of theirs with a GPS collar on it made it to Oklahoma, about 700 miles away, and was killed there. One of them went into Manitoba, Canada, and they lost the circuit.” The Mississippi River has slowed down eastward migration, Gyekis said, but that’s not the sole factor. Most of the animals killed are young, sexually immature males that females won’t come near. “They’re hungry; they’re stupid with testosterone,” Gyekis said, adding that looking at the reports of their roadkill is “like looking at a police report of a DUI.” “It hasn’t happened in the East, but they’re already in the Midwest. You can’t really say there is a population but they are definitely there. They’re in the cornfields in Iowa and those people haven’t had them for 100 years. So they are really there. They’ve got roadkill, and that is probably your best indicator.” Tracks, Scat, and Photographs The presentation shifts to hard evidence and how to document a sighting. Gyekis can tell pretty quickly whether a track belongs to a cougar and scat can be processed for DNA, especially if the sample is preserved carefully (SEE SIDEBAR). But much of the cougar-sighting evidence comes to Gyekis and ECF volunteers as photographs. And Distance is one of the problems in cougar identification and bobcats play a big part in that problem. Pennsylvania’s bobcat population is huge, said Gyekis, but most people have never seen one. They are much smaller—a typical male bobcat is three feet long and weighs about twenty-five pounds while male cougars are twice that length and weigh about 140 pounds on average—but they look similar to cougars and distance increases the margin of error for the inexperienced cougar spotter. Gyekis flipped the switch and showed a large cat prowling in the woods at twilight or dawn. “That just came in several days ago,” he said. “Came in as a picture of a cougar. It’s pretty obviously a bobcat. There’s no question in my mind. But, again, people say, ‘I’ve seen bobcats all my life.’ Chances are they haven’t. They haven’t seen a lot of them. That’s pretty darn obvious.” He hit the switch again and the screen showed another large cat with its back to the camera sitting in the woods on a bright, sunny day. The on-screen captions read: “There are many hundreds, even thousands of sightings in PA, the East” and “Sightings. What is Real?” “That came from Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. Now we’re getting local. I heard about it and I went to see it. Quite a cougar.” Gyekis smiled. “But that’s a good shot of a bobcat. It’s definitely not a cougar. That one’s a fairly tough one. You can’t see the tail. You can’t really see the body. You have to look really closely to see the points on the ears. “It’s interesting but it’s a PA bobcat. And a lot of people tell me that’s a cougar even though I can see spots from here. I can tell by the configuration of musculature; it’s not just about the tail. People send in photos of house cats and it’s hard for me to believe that they mistake it for a cougar. But they do.” Twin Tiers Potential Gyekis begins winding down the presentation by showing a map of possible cougar habitat in the East. Pennsylvania is represented by two large swaths, one of which roughly follows the Appalachian Trail; the other is more or less “The Pennsylvania Wilds” area designated by the Gyekis said he’s hopeful that recolonization will take place here but he’s aware of the obstacles and opposition that will crop up if cougars appear in the area. Cougar attacks are infrequent and deaths from attacks rarer still. But statistics point to an increase of attacks and fatalities as suburbs and exurbs encroach on the cougar’s habitat. And because of conservation measures—it’s illegal, for instance, to hunt cougars now in California—their population has grown. Coexistence will be a delicate dance. Wikipedia tells us there “have been 108 confirmed attacks on humans with twenty fatalities in North America since 1890, fifty of the incidents having occurred since 1991. California has seen a dozen attacks since 1986 (after just three from 1890 to 1985), including three fatalities.” Gyekis can tell horror stories. Such as a young man killed by a cougar in Colorado as he ran in the woods behind a school. When they found him, the cougar was still guarding the kill. Humans, used to cuddly, domesticated house cats, might shudder at that horror, but the cougar’s behavior is dictated by nature, which is not cruel but concerned strictly with survival. It normally sees us as something to avoid. It would rather avoid us than attack us because we are pretty big as mammals go and not its natural prey. As Gyekis said, a cougar is not really built to kill humans, though obviously it can. It does not see us as benefactors and can’t show appreciation, which is something humans desire as benefactors. “But this is the story,” Gyekis said. “The people in Colorado really wanted the cougars to come in. And they still do. But they’ve wised up a little bit about inviting them in your yard. It’s like a bear. When you feed it, you’ve created a situation where you’re going to kill the bear when you feed it. And they loved to see the cougars coming in. But then the cougars started hunting them.” |
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Gyekis said. “I mean, most of them weren’t lying—we’ve caught a couple liars—but, in the East, most of them really thought they had seen a cougar. And I thought, ‘Well, they can’t all be wrong.’ In fact, I figured quite a few of them had to be right. 
the eye can play tricks. Not to mention a trickster armed with Photoshop or another type of photo-manipulation software.
commonwealth. Part of that bumps up into New York near Allegany State Park north of Bradford, Pennsylvania. Another spot in New York is in the Adirondacks with the Lake Placid-Saranac Lake area as its center. 
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