Lanse couche couche

Dunno about rabid penguins, but most of the other species mentioned can become quite dangerous when they are allowed to inhabit areas with high numbers of people in a manner thatthey lose their fear of people and/or start incorporating their pets into the food chain. Under such circumstances, it is common practice to kill or remove them whether or not they are statistically as dangerous as getting hit while J-walking.

spaniel

Cougars are part of the NATURAL state in the midwest. It is only because of us that they have been absent for a few decades. The people who want them exterminated are the same ones who scream when there aren't so many deer per square mile that don't have to actually HUNT to get one.

I have little patience for "hunters" who only see game populations as being maintained for their own personal use, rather than taking into consideration the natural balance and the concerns of landowners, such as farmers, who depend upon the habitat for their very livelihood.

If you are a farmer, and you see deer eating your livelihood so some hunter who uses the neighboring land 2 days per year can see some extra game, you know what I'm talking about.

I am a hunter, and a son of a farmer, AND a biologist. Most midwestern states have too many deer, plain and simple. Plenty of deer to give a few to a small population of cougars.

I do laugh, however, at the DNRs denying the existence of cougars in their states. I actually had a cougar on a 2-acre parcel of land in suburban Detroit in 2003 and the MI DNR tried to convince me it was something else. I shared my credentials and challenged them as to why they shouldn't believe me, and they quietly left....

Lanse couche couche

I think that buffalo are part of the natural state of the Midwest too. But a couple thousand of those things running loose would wreak havoc. The reintroduction or spread of particular animals has to be evaulated according to contemporary conditions,including human and livestock ppopulation densities, not what the natural state was 150 years previously.

spaniel

Who said anything about recreating 150 years ago? We're talking about those who want every predator exterminated because they will eat a few deer and using wildly inflated assessments of the supposed danger they pose as rationale. There's a big difference between having a few in a managed population, and 150 years ago.

While the DNR in MI has refused until recently to admit there are cougars in MI, there are a decent number around confirmed from coast to coast, north to south. Yet all of these terrible things they supposedly do have not happened -- no one's kid has been drug off a school bus stop and eated, deer populations in the south are higher than ever....it's just fear-mongering because some "hunters" only care about themselves and how many deer they can see from their propane-heated stand and not actually have to HUNT a little.

Cougars are pretty reclusive, the areas you hear having problems with them out west are areas where the population has gotten TOO HIGH and the young males can't find territories and are pushed (hungry and tormented) into the suburbs where they really don't want to be in the first place.

Lanse couche couche

You brought up the issue of cougars being part of the natural state, however, the natural state that they belonged in ceased to exist in most of the Midwest by the time of the Civil War. I don't think that many folks have a problem with a few well managed (again, not a natural state) cougars in isolated areas. However, the ultimate danger is having them get out of hand in areas with significant human/livestock populations like they have in parts of California where theymost certainly have beena confirmed threat to humans. There is also the issue that as a cougar population rises, they may start to figure out that cows, sheep, etc are much easier to catch than deer. As it stands now, most reports of cougars in the Midwest seem to be largely single animals passing thru a large area. However, if you start getting somewhat sedentary breeding populations, then the scenario changes dramatically.
A lot of things can happen if you have any more than a few cougars in some isolated areasof Midwest and most of them are bad.

Senecaville Slayer

I think the reality of managmentwith all of these increasing predator populations probably lies somewhere in between. Sure enough you don't want a high population of mountain lions living in your downtown or suburban areas. I will agree to concede on that point. I would argue though that out in the country where populations are sparse at best, why don't these animals have a right to exist.

I don't know the exact figures but I would guess less than 75% of this country is densely populated, so it seems to me there should be more than enough room to let a reasonable number of predators roam the countryside.

Lanse couche couche

I guess it would depend on what you consider to be sparsely populated and what you would consider to be a reasonable number of predators. Any given county indownstate Illinois might be sparsely populated by Chicago standards, but it still means that you have homes and farms at least every 1/4 of a mile on the average. Not a whole lot of room for humans and panthers to get along and i doubt that local folks are gonna entertain much argument about it. On the other hand, a couple panthers out in the middle of Shawnee forest might not create much problem, except when they startreproducing and spreading outside of the isolated areas.