Many, Many Miles to Go...

A mountain lion killed by a motorist some 70 miles from New York City in June is the same animal that traveled through Minnesota and northern Wisconsin in the winter of 2009-2010 - a record-setting cross-continental journey that has left scientists amazed, officials announced this afternoon.
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Biologists suspect - but don't know for sure - that it wandered through Michigan's Upper Peninsula, into southern Ontario, and somehow skirted the eastern Great Lakes on its way into New York State. They know it was the same cat as one that surfaced in the tony New York suburb of Greenwich, Conn., last month before it was struck by a car June 11 on a busy highway in Milford, Conn. It was the first confirmed mountain lion in that state in more than a century; the eastern mountain lion was formally declared extinct just this year.

The lion was initially presumed to be a victim of illegal pet trade. Scientists from Montana to Connecticut said they were surprised when evidence began to increasingly point to a wild animal born in the Black Hills of South Dakota. When the final confirmation arrived that it was the same animal as the St. Croix Cougar, surprise turned to amazement, several scientists said.

"It's one of those amazing animal stories," said Adrian Wydeven, a conservation biologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, who helped track the cat when it passed through here. "It shows the potential some of these animals have for moving across the landscape."