Cougars in Michigan: Where they are and where they come from

MARQUETTE, Mich. (WJMN) — Cougars are native to Michigan, but it’s likely you’ve never seen one or even a trace left behind. They are now listed as endangered.

In 2008, the Michigan Department of Resources formed a team to confirm and monitor sightings of cougars, DNR large carnivore specialist Cody Norton explained.

Cougars were once legal to hunt in Michigan.

“Our last legally harvested cougar was back in 1906 near Newberry. After that, it was pretty quiet in the state,” Norton told WJMN, WOOD TV8’s Marquette sister station. “But in the late ’90s, early 2000s, we started having more, some reports come up that look like, ‘Hey, this might be consistent with cougar’ — either signs or photographs. But the department didn’t have a protocol in place for how to investigate those or determine whether they were real or not and we didn’t necessarily have people with the expertise to do it, so in 2008, the department formed a cougar team.” ............(more)

https://www.woodtv.com/news/michigan/cougars-in-michigan-where-they-are-and-where-they-come-from/?