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Cougar Photo Intrigues Experts in Wisconsin

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mudbrook:
Cougar Photo Intrigues Experts in Wisconsin

If you're at a point in life where you're pondering your career path, pray you never commit such treacheries that God makes you a state-employed biologist who works with deer, wolves or cougars.


Why? If you work for the Department of Natural Resources, everyone knows you overestimate deer herds, underestimate wolf numbers, stock cougars clandestinely and work overtime to deny the big cat's existence. And if you work for a university, everyone knows you're the DNR's pointy-headed accomplice.


Meanwhile, how can so many nice people receive cougar photos via e-mail and pass them along as if Moses certified their authenticity? Maybe it's just mountain lion mania. Whether they're called pumas, panthers, mountain lions or catamounts, cougars have not had a self-sustaining population in Wisconsin for 100 years.


Yet many people yearn for proof that cougars not only live here, but eat our deer and stalk our children while our government sleeps. The Internet succors such beliefs. One popular photo shows a cougar staring into the camera and carries the caption, "Cougar near Butternut WI." The e-mail read:

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070315/GPG07/703150543/1273/GPGbusiness

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