A female puma with her three kittens spotted on a trail camera in Minnesota marked a historic moment, according to scientists. The sighting in March was the first time in more than a century that pumas have been observed breeding in the state. The recording was the result of an unrelated project with deer. Scientists with the University of Minnesota’s Voyageurs Wolf Project (VWP) detected that one of their radio-collared deer was dead. Upon investigation, they found, “the carcass buried under a pile of leaves on a hillside — a tell-tale sign of feline predation,” VWP said in a statement.   At first, the researchers suspected a bobcat killed the deer, so they set up two trail cameras. They were surprised to find an adult female puma and her three kittens instead. “Without a doubt, our best trail camera capture yet,” VWP said. Pumas (Puma concolor), also known as cougars, mountain lions or panthers, have nearly as many names as habitats. Before settlers arrived in the New World, the cats could be found all the way from the subarctic in Canada to South America, from the Amazon to Patagonia. They ranged across the entire U.S. before hunting and habitat loss drove the largest remaining breeding populations to a few pockets of wilderness in the country’s west. There have been occasional sightings of pumas in the eastern U.S., such as in Connecticut. However, those were likely either escaped pets or lone males in search of a territory and a mate. Females…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via This RSS Feed.