"While more recent genetic information introduces significant ambiguities, a full taxonomic analysis is necessary to conclude that a revision to the Young and Goldman (1946) taxonomy is warranted," the agency said in 2011.
While noting that some taxonomists in recent years have classified all North American cougars within a single subspecies, the agency's 2011 report said, "a full taxonomic analysis is necessary to conclude that a revision to the Young and Goldman (1946) taxonomy is warranted.
"[8] The agency acknowledged the occasional presence of cougars in eastern North America, indicating confirmed sightings are wanderers from western breeding ranges or escaped captives.
Its review expressed skepticism that breeding populations exist north of Florida, noting, among other things, the lack of consistent road kill evidence comparable to known cougar ranges.
[16] Bruce Wright — a wildlife biologist and former student of Aldo Leopold — popularized the idea that a breeding population of cougars persisted in northern New England and the Maritime provinces through a series of articles and books published between 1960 and 1973.
[18] At least several dozen or more reported sightings have been confirmed by biologists, many of whom believe they are accounted for by escaped captives or individual members of the western subspecies that have wandered hundreds of miles from their established breeding ranges in the Dakotas or elsewhere in the west.
[35] Until around 1990, reports of mountain lions in the Midwest and East were highly influenced by the "Bigfoot factor", according to Mark Dowling, co-founder of the Eastern Cougar Network.
"None of it was really real", he said in an interview,[36] but the situation has changed dramatically since that time according to Dowling, whose group collects and disseminates data on the shifting mountain lion population.
[36] Dowling said in 2003 that sightings in the eastern half of the nation, including Michigan, etc., were "almost certainly" escaped captives, but he added that the notion that (western) cougars "will eventually reach New Jersey" is a reasonable prediction, in part due to increased populations of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus).
"Wildlife officials, who at first assumed the cat was a captive animal that had escaped its owners, examined its DNA and concluded that it was a wild cougar from the Black Hills of South Dakota.
While subadult females with Black Hills DNA have been documented since 2015 in Tennessee, Missouri and Iowa, as of 2018, the easternmost breeding colony north of Florida is the Niobrara River Valley in central Nebraska.
The eight eastern states with the biggest areas of viable cougar habitat, as analysed in the study, were: New Hampshire and West Virginia (both 75%), Vermont and Maine (both 65%), Massachusetts (33%), Connecticut (32%), New York (31%), and Pennsylvania (29%).
"[39] Based on this, in 1999, the magazine Canadian Geographic reported that for the previous half century, a debate over whether or not Canada's eastern woods host a cougar species all its own has raged.
The researchers found that "Nittany Lions are not more similar to each other than to individuals from the Western U.S. and Florida", which strengthens the position that all North American cougars are a single subspecies.