MOREHEAD, KY – Mountain lions, also known as cougars or pumas, have long been a subject of fascination and folklore in Kentucky.
Once roaming widely across the state, these majestic predators were driven to near extinction in the region due to overhunting, habitat loss, and eradication campaigns.
According to the Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife Resources, by 2011, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared the eastern cougar extinct, concluding that this subspecies of big cats had disappeared from the eastern United States by the 1930s.
In Kentucky, research indicates that wild mountain lions have not been present for over a century.
According to the Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife Resources, the landmark 1974 book Mammals of Kentucky by Roger W. Barbour and Wayne H. Davis noted that there were no valid records of mountain lions in the state after 1899.
Despite this, reports of mountain lion sightings continue to surface each year.
However, only two have been confirmed: a female kitten struck by a car in Floyd County in 1997, which DNA testing revealed to be of South American ancestry, and an adult male dispatched by a conservation officer in Bourbon County in 2014, according to the Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife Resources.