Cougar Cubs Photographed in Michigan For First Time In Over 100 Years
An anonymous photographer captured images of the first cougar cubs to be seen in Michigan in more than 100 years.
Last week, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources released a trio of photographs that showed a pair of tiny cougars roaming through the snow in Michigan.
The images mark the first time that cougar cubs have been discovered living in the wild in Michigan since the big cats were hunted out of existence in the state in the early 1900s.
An unnamed resident photographed the cougar cubs, believed to be 7 to 9 weeks old, on private land in Ontonagon County in the western Upper Peninsula on March 3.
According to Michigan Live, the man was driving in the area when he saw what they first believed were kittens from a different wild cat species.
“Saw the two young kittens running down the road and stopped, and one of them ran under his truck,” Brian Roell, large carnivore specialist for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, tells the news outlet.
“He thought they were bobcat kittens, and so he took some pictures of them, and someone else actually stopped, and they both talked about them, like, ‘Oh, neat kittens.’ And then they went along their day, not thinking anything of it.”
However, when state biologists saw the photographs, they realized that the tiny animals didn’t seem to be bobcat cubs. Instead, Roell, who has been a wildlife biologist for 26 years, led a team that verified that the animals in the images were cougar cubs.
The cubs were spotted and photographed by the man without their mother. Cougar cubs are highly dependent on their mothers, often staying with them for the first two years of life.
It is possible that the cubs’ mother may have been nearby, or that the tiny animals might have already sadly been on their own. Roell says the cougar cubs haven’t been seen since March 6.
“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.”
Although the big cats are native to Michigan, humans hunted them out of existence by the early 1900s. The last time a wild cougar was legally hunted in the state was in 1906, according to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
While the Michigan Department of Natural Resources has verified 132 sightings of adult cougars since 2008, all of them believed to be wandering in from Western states.
In the meantime, the local population has failed to rebound, and they remain on Michigan’s endangered mammals list. The photographs signify the first known modern cougar births in the western Great Lake states.
“It’s pretty exciting, considering this could be the first known cougar reproduction in modern times in the western Great Lakes states,” Roell says, referring to Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
“It really shows that we have a unique place in Michigan where someone has a chance to see a wolf, a moose, and a cougar in the wild. It’s something that should be celebrated, that we have the habitat to support an elusive animal like this.”
In January 2024, rare footage of a cougar hunt in Michigan was captured on trail camera.
Image credits: All photos via Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
