Expanding Puma Range

I grabbed this map from Dale Drinnon's blog, and it tells the story pretty clearly.  The puma is well on its way to reestablishing itself everywhere.  The deer populations are growing hugely, to say nothing of turkeys. I also expect to see plenty of the grey wolf as the years progress and both are dangerous to humans, particularly in winter when food does become scarce. Our core problem is that we are not yet seriously managing populations of both preditors and prey, and at some point we must.  For the moment we are dealing with early recovery.  There will come a point in which we have too many deer and certainly too many wolves in particular. The challenge now facing us is to limit ranges and learn to manage populations without resorting to outright extermination again. Pumas on the Loose Posted: 26 Apr 2013 04:38 PM PDT For some reason, certain people treat reports of pumas (Profelis concolor) in the Eastern United states as "Monster" reports and include them under the heading of Cryptozoology. This is a map indicating good confirmed occurrances of pumas outside their acceped range (green) ober the past few decades. It is not a map that includes ALL sightings of "Eastern pumas" or anything of the sort. The ,ap very clearly shows that the animals are tending to fill up areas where there is little or no competition with their own species, and that they canm wander a long way unhindered and without being detected. Once again, ALL such "Big Cat" reports are NOT Cryptozoological, they are merely unexpected by the local authorities. No reports of any animals whose species can be identified as having a currently known living and breeding population anywhere on Earth can strictly be said to be Cryptozoological.