Photo by David Schindle for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
Eastern Cougar Kits
In 2014, a potential Eastern Cougar sighting close to Riverside Elementary School on Old Mount Vernon Road went viral. School authorities canceled outdoor recess out of an abundance of caution. Almost instantly, the county set up cameras to confirm if this fabled animal was back to reclaim its territory.
Even though many believe this creature to be rare, most are surprised to learn that they were once common to the area. Before their extinction, Eastern Cougars lived in countless areas near the community, such as the Shenandoah, Blue Ridge and the Allegheny Mountains. While these are hours away, cougars can walk great distances and they easily made the long journey to Fairfax County’s forested borders.
However, as early settlers began to spread through the region, it proved to be the beginning of the end of the Eastern Cougar. Their consistent presence led them to be perceived as a menacing predator that would prowl around at night in search of cattle and people. Consequently, bounties were provided by local governments to incentivize hunters.
Despite the broad belief that the hunts would make the community safer, it ended up being counter-intuitive, as suggested by Rick Hopkins, president of The Cougar Fund: “You don’t make people or cattle safer by killing cougars. If you hunt them too much, you increase the number of sub-adult males who tend to cause the most trouble so conflict will go up.”
But why did the cougar disappear from Alexandria?
Didn’t the nearby forests and mountains provide enough room?
What is often forgotten is that during the start of the 20th-century these now lush wildernesses, like Shenandoah National Park, weren’t always forests but sprawling farms. As Edward Clark, founder of The Wildlife Center of Virginia, explained, “The advancement of European colonists in these areas turned their forests into pastures, pushing the cougars westward.”
In an attempt to mitigate these disappearances, the Eastern Cougar Recovery Plan was developed. This 1982 project did not succeed despite its best efforts, and today, the effects of the cougar’s absence are clear. For instance, you might notice a recent influx of whitetail deer in Northern Virginia — and while intriguing, these creatures can wreak havoc on farms and be road dangers. The cougar diet managed the deer population which kept their numbers under control. Without them, the deer population continues to increase, leading to serious issues not only for their own herds, but for humans, too.
While the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officially classifies the Eastern Cougar as extinct, that doesn’t mean there’s not a hidden colony somewhere, including perhaps near Alexandria. This belief is still a cause for debate as experts vary in their opinions, although most lean toward the extinction side of the argument.
Clark, for instance, declares that the Eastern Cougar is gone and never coming back, largely because it doesn’t coexist well with humans. Hopkins agrees on this point but doesn’t necessarily concur with Clark on the complete absence of the cougar from the area.
“A population is a somewhat self-sustaining and breeding region,” he says. “Cougars move great distances and we’ve seen South Dakota cougars move as far as Oklahoma.” Their thoughts might differ but one thing’s clear: Cougars need adequate space and privacy if they’re to thrive.
There’s a slight possibility that against all odds cougars have discovered a well-hidden spot along the East Coast to prosper. Because of its scope and terrain, it can be difficult for even modern explorers to track cougars. This could provide hope that somewhere concealed in its landscape there’s a small population still unknown.
New research has also shown that Western Cougars (basically cougars that live in the West) are slowly moving back East. While this doesn’t necessarily mean a rebound, it could lead to nearby mountains and forests seeing occasional cougars once more. But, with development booming along the Eastern Seaboard, chances are slim. Cougars need space and it would be hard for them to travel in these areas without running into sections where they could be killed or spooked away.
So what about those mysterious cougar sightings in Alexandria? More than likely, they’re just bobcats passing through. But cougar enthusiasts, don’t despair. There’s still a sliver of a chance that these encounters are much more significant and could be an outlier of a close-by population.
The next time you venture around the city or glance out your window during the evening, that quick flash of fur you see out of the corner of your eye might not be a figment of your imagination, but rather a unique glance at Alexandria’s past and perhaps its secretive present.
