Just for Fun: Mountain Lions in PA?

There’s a lot of talk these days, at least around the Poconos, about mountain lions.

 

The evidence presented was a photo, found to have been taken in Montana.  So it’s all talk, right?

 

Well a funny thing happened on the way to thee abyss.  Suddenly, there are people coming out of the proverbial wood work claiming that they saw one ______.  Fill in the blank- ten years ago, at xyz location.  They swear it was a mountain lion- big long tail, too big to be a bobcat, too catlike to be a coyote, the list goes on.  Now I know there was a lady near the AT in Eldred that had exotic pets and her puma did get loose once, but seriously?  Mountain lions in PA?  Wild ones?  I’ve seen a lot of trail camera offloads from different regions and have yet to see a mountain lion.  Seen otters, fishers, bald eagles, fox, yotes, bear, dogs, house cats, squirrels, lots of critters, but never a mountain lion.

 

Yet there it is, all over facebook- claims of sightings by all sorts of people.  No photos, no sign, no tracks, no trail cam shots.  A lot of talk though.  Of course the Game Commission denies it.  As the theorists theorize, the PGC is secretly reintroducing the big cats to the state.  Perhaps, one story goes, to reduce the deer population.  I would expect this maybe from the DCNR, but not the Game Commission.  Or maybe they got loose from a zoo in upstate NY and have naturalized and wandered south?

 

The biologist in me always has to keep an open mind.  If you have proof; real live demonstrative evidence of a cat in our midst, please send it to me.  But as a hiker who has spent a fair amount of time wandering Penn’s woods, I gotta say “There ain’t no mountain lions in Pennsylvania.”