Wildlife biologists from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources verified the presence of a pair of cougar cubs in Ontonagon County on Wednesday. Photos of the kittens taken on March 6 on private land by a resident provided the first potential evidence of cougar reproduction in the Great Lakes State since the cats were extirpated in the early 1900s.
Michigan DNR large carnivore specialist Brian Roell led the team that verified the cubs.
“It’s pretty exciting, but we’re also being cautious about what this actually means,” Roell tells Outdoor Life. “It’s easy to blow this out of proportion, but truthfully, we cannot confirm that this is actual reproduction because we haven’t seen an adult with these kittens.”
Of course, two mountain lion kittens didn’t just fall out of the sky. Roell says it’s logical to assume an adult is associated with these young cougars, even if there is no physical evidence. Roell says there have also been six confirmed trail camera pictures of an adult in the area since January.
“We don’t know if she bred here,” Roell says. “Given the three-month gestation period, there would have been enough time for an animal to walk here, although females don’t typically range as much as males.”
Cougars are not complete strangers to Michigan. The big cats once roamed the state freely. However, after decades of intense unregulated hunting and trapping, by the early 1900s, the animals had disappeared. The last known legally taken Michigan cougar was harvested near Newberry in 1906.
Today, sightings of the big cats are infrequent, although they have increased in recent years. The DNR has verified 132 reports of adult cougars in the state since 2008, Roell says. So far, however, the DNR has only confirmed the presence of male cougars in the state.This was accomplished with DNA samples collected by staff in the wild, and from the carcasses of two poached toms. Those males proved to be genetically related to cats in South Dakota.
A citizen who wishes to remain anonymous spotted the two cubs along the side of a road on March 6. At the time, he thought they were bobcat kittens.
“It was the day after a really big blizzard,” Roell says. “They were so young that they weren’t able to get over the snow banks on the side of the road.
Western biologists from areas with larger mountain lion populations consulted with Roell to confirm the identity and age of the cougar cubs, which they say is between 7 and 9 weeks old.
“That means they were born right around Christmas,” Roell says.
Roell also received pictures of tracks where an adult traveled across a frozen pod on the private property adjacent to where the cubs were sighted. However, there were no kitten tracks with the set of adult tracks.
The two cubs have not been seen since March 6, nor has the adult seen on trail cameras in the area.
“Those young cougars are very vulnerable right now,” Roell says. “We don’t know where they are or if they’re even alive. Mother Nature can be very cruel.”
Cougar cubs typically remain with their mothers for 18 to 24 months as they learn crucial survival skills and rely on them for protection. Only about one in six cougar cubs survive to adulthood.
“I hope they are together,” Roell says. “If they are, that would confirm that Michigan has had reproduction, making us the first of the Great Lakes States. It doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened before. It just means it hasn’t been documented.”
Roell says the golden ticket in this situation would be an image of the kittens traveling with an adult.
“There are private property owners over there that have a bunch of trail cameras,” Roell says. “I have been in contact with all of them, and they are anxious to share pictures of all three of them together. So, we’re hopeful.”
You can log sightings and physical evidence, such as tracks, scat, or carcasses, on the DNR website via the agency’s Eyes in the Field reporting system. Roell notes that cougars are listed as an endangered species in Michigan, which means it is illegal to disturb a den or harass them in any way.