Trail Cameras Capture First Cougar Kittens in Minnesota in Over 100 Years

Trail cameras captured incredibly rare footage of cougar kittens in Minnesota — the first confirmed evidence in more than a century that cougars are reproducing in the state.

In late March, remote cameras placed near Voyageurs National Park in northern Minnesota recorded a female cougar with three large kittens. The video, captured by the University of Minnesota’s Voyageurs Wolf Project, is the first documentation of a reproducing cougar population in the state in 100 years.

The trail camera footage shows the kittens up close as they feed at a site south of the park. The Voyageurs Wolf Project, which has deployed hundreds of trail cameras across northeast Minnesota for wolf research, has previously recorded lone cougars eight times since 2023. However, none of those recordings included kittens.

The newly released footage came from two remote cameras set up by researchers near a GPS-collared deer they believed had been killed by a cougar. The setup allowed the team to document the animals over an extended period.

“Looking at the footage was and still is surreal. We never anticipated seeing four cougars together in northern Minnesota,” Thomas Gable, project lead of the Voyageurs Wolf Project, says in a news release published by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

“In total, we captured around four hours of footage of this cougar family at the kill, and it was fascinating to see and hear their interactions — the mother grooming her kittens, the kittens growling and hissing at each other. We feel incredibly fortunate we were able to capture such a wild moment in such detail.”

Cougars were once native to Minnesota but became locally extinct. Until recently, there had been no confirmed evidence of reproduction in the eastern Midwest — east of the Dakotas and Nebraska — for more than a century. Reports in recent years from Michigan and now Minnesota suggest that this may be changing. Sightings of individual adult cougars, often wandering males, are now relatively common across Minnesota and much of the western Midwest.

“Based on traits observed in the video, we estimate the kittens to be 7–9 months old, so born last fall,” says John Erb, a research biologist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. “The only other confirmed kittens in Minnesota turned out to be captive escapees and involved a female with two kittens that showed up and hung around a homeowner’s porch in 2001.”

According to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, cougars can travel more than 40 miles in a single day. Animals documented in Minnesota so far are believed to be transient individuals that moved east from western states such as South Dakota, North Dakota, and Nebraska.

Cougars typically avoid human contact and are rarely seen, even in areas where populations are established.

“Although this is an important starting point for potential population establishment in Minnesota, predicting the future is extremely difficult,” Erb adds.

“These kittens might not survive, potentially getting killed by wolves, a male cougar or vehicles. They may also become part of the founding catalyst for a slow but steady increase in numbers. Time will tell, but we are clearly nearing a point where the probability of a self-sustaining population has increased.”