REGIONAL— There is yet more evidence that a small breeding population of cougars is roaming the remote forests of northern St. Louis County, with new sightings of immature cougars and repeated sightings of a male cougar hunting and scenting on what appears to be an established territory. If so, it would be the first evidence of a wild, male cougar establishing resident territory in Minnesota in more than a century.
As the Timberjay reported back in April, researchers with the Voyageurs Wolf Project recorded extensive video of a female cougar and three nearly-full-grown cubs feeding on a deer carcass within their study area near Voyageurs National Park. That was the first evidence of cougar breeding in the state in many years.
While cougars have been spotted regularly on trail cameras in northern Minnesota in recent years, most images have been one-time captures, suggesting cougars passing through. Younger cougars are known to disperse at maturity to find new territories, and it’s been believed these occasional sightings or images in the region were from dispersing cats, mostly young males.
But the images captured by the Voyageurs Wolf Project, which began in March, have shown the same male cat returning to the same locations more than a dozen times over the past few months. “He conveniently scent marked twice right in front of the camera,” said Tom Gable, lead researcher with the project. “He’s been around consistently since mid-to-late March.”
While Gable has refrained from identifying the exact locations of their cougar sightings, he said the male cougar was in the general vicinity of the female with cubs spotted earlier this year. Gable has since gathered both hair and scat samples from the various cats, which could help determine if the male cougar in the area is, in fact, the father of the three cubs.
Gable notes that cougars in the western U.S. are territorial, and he said the male cougar they’ve been watching is showing signs of territoriality, particularly by returning to scent in the same locations.
Crane Lake area sighting
A short segment of video posted to the Crane Lake area Facebook page, which appears to show at least two cougar cubs, could be evidence of additional cougar cubs in the region— or it could be the same three cougar cubs recorded earlier this year by Gable and his team.
That sighting, along Nelson Rd., was posted to Facebook on June 26, with the poster claiming to have seen a total of three cougar cubs. The Nelson Rd. sighting was about 12 miles as the crow flies from the site where the cougar cubs were originally recorded by the Voyageurs Wolf Project.