Ghost Cats

Are Ontario’s elusive mountain lions making a comeback?

An 1830 painting of a mountain lion in Louisiana, which is outside the animal’s current habitat. INTERNET ARCHIVE BOOK IMAGES/PUBLIC DOMAIN

It was a fall afternoon, around 3:30 p.m., and Frank Docherty was driving home to Little Britain, Ontario—100 kilometres northeast of Toronto—from his job at an auto plant in Oshawa. He was just a few minutes from town when, suddenly, something ran across the road. “It wasn’t a deer. It wasn’t a bear. It was in the distance, but I saw the tail. It was a cougar, I’m 100 per cent sure. It gave me goosebumps. I thought, They’re really here.” The animal Docherty almost certainly caught a glimpse of back in 2008 was a Puma concolor, otherwise known as the cougar, mountain lion or puma. Native to North, Central and South America, the species retreated to roughly one-third of its historical range in Canada and the U.S. in the 19th and 20th centuries, surviving in the less-populated western expanses of both countries. By the 1940s the mountain lion was considered extirpated from eastern North America, and since 2008 the animal has been listed as endangered in Ontario. (In 2018, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared the eastern cougar extinct,

although that subspecies is now seen as a misnomer by wildlife scientists who believe there’s only one type of cougar in the Americas.) Despite this decline and the elusiveness of big cats, sporadic sightings have continued in Ontario over the past few decades, occasionally captured in grainy photos or videos, including one filmed by a woman who had an experience like Docherty’s while driving north of Kenora last December. Whether in the northwestern part of the “The story has changed, province, the Collingwood area, the Ottawa Valley or and there’s strong anywhere in between, most of those cougars had likely escaped from or were intentionally released from captivity, evidence now that says naturalist Michael Runtz, who may have spent more cougars are migrating time in Ontario’s forests than anybody else in the past here from the west.” 50 years. Sometimes the tracks or dens of other species, like foxes or coyotes, are thought to belong to cougars, according to Runtz. Without scale, a bobcat or even an overweight house cat on a grassy hill can look like a much larger animal. “People see what they want to see, or misinterpret what they see,” says Runtz. “But the story has changed, and there’s strong evidence now that cougars are migrating here from the west.”

A trail camera capture near Thunder Bay. ADAM MASSARO/CBC When my eyes first detected movement on the edge of a scrubby field about 10 metres from the Georgian Trail outside of Meaford—where I stood astride my bicycle, my water bottle raised—I thought, young deer. An instant later, however, I realized that the animal fleeing into the cover of a nearby wood was not a deer. Was it a hallucination brought on by overexertion? As the creature’s strange shape, gait and coloration fixed in my mind, one thing became reasonably clear: I had crossed paths with some kind of large wild feline. I guessed it to be more than five feet in length. Its tail was another two or more feet long and upcurled. Its lithe body was slung so low that its belly nearly touched the ground. It was dark mottled grey with a small head and small ears. According to Andy McKee, a former Fish and Wildlife Biologist with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources I spoke to after this 2007 sighting, I had probably seen a mountain lion. At that time he believed these cats may have escaped from captivity. I wish I’d had a camera with me, but in any case the animal moved too fast for a clear photo. I’ve heard that wildlife biologists in California refer to the pathologically shy mountain lion as the “ghost cat”—an apt description. –Ned Morgan

That theory is confirmed by Brent Patterson, a senior research scientist with the province’s Ministry of Northern Development, Mines, Natural Resources and Forestry and an adjunct professor at Trent University. DNA from a dead cougar found near Kakabeka Falls in northwestern Ontario in 2017 and hair from the Thunder Bay area in January 2021 matched samples from populations in Manitoba and the Black Hills of South Dakota. “As such,” says Patterson, “we believe there are now some wild cougars pushing into Without scale, a bobcat northwestern Ontario from neighbouring populations.” The ministry doesn’t know or even an overweight how many cougars might be in Ontario, house cat on a grassy nor is there convincing evidence of a breeding population in the province, but hill can look like a much Patterson says the number of cougars in larger animal. “People see Manitoba is growing and that it’s likely a breeding population will eventually take what they want to see, or root on this side of the provincial border. misinterpret what they Mountain lions need a couple things to survive: prey and contiguous see.” – Michael Runtz tracts of forest. Ontario has the terrain to support them, says Runtz, as well as ample populations of white-tailed deer, their most frequent food source. Like other predators, including wolves and bears, cougars can pose a threat to livestock, yet Runtz discounts the rumour that farmers might “shoot, shovel and shut up” rather than report a cougar incident. That might happen when coyotes go after sheep, he says, but similar cougar attacks would be exceedingly rare. Beyond the proof cited by Patterson, nearly 500 pieces of evidence—from scat and hair samples to tracks, photos and credible sightings—documented the presence of cougars in Ontario between 1991 and 2010. Patterson’s government colleague Rick Rosatte summarized this evidence in a 2011 Canadian Field Naturalist paper, concluding “What is important is that there are ‘freeranging’ North American genotype cougars in Ontario that have originated from an unknown combination of released, escaped, native or dispersing animals.” In a follow-up paper four years later, Rosatte added six more pieces of evidence, including scat found near Collingwood in 2012 that lab analysis confirmed to be mountain lion.

While Patterson believes the Collingwood area is too densely populated and visited, too far from source populations and has forests that are too fragmented to support resident cougars without frequent and definitive detection, he’s excited by the prospect of breeding animals recolonizing parts of northwestern Ontario. “This represents a conservation success story,” he says, “a further move towards the restoration of naturally functioning ecosystems with all trophic levels intact.”

Neither Patterson nor Runtz have ever seen a mountain lion in the wild, but Runtz really hopes to someday, especially in his home province, although there are also bird, insect and plant species in Ontario that he’s still looking for. Docherty, meanwhile, who used to hunt, has put down his rifle and picked up a camera. A few friends and neighbours have reported seeing cougars, and he’s zeroed in on a spot a few kilometres from his house. “I think the chances are good,” he says, still stirred by his past encounter, “and this time I’m going to get a picture.” –Dan Rubinstein