No lions here
So you think you spotted a cougar — commonly called a mountain lion — in Rappahannock County however many years ago?
Impossible, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, which in another three weeks will officially remove the “extinct” (their word, not ours) eastern cougar subspecies (Felis
concolor couguar) from the Federal List of Threatened and Endangered Wildlife — “correcting a lingering anomaly that listed the species despite it likely having gone extinct many decades before the Endangered Species Act (ESA) was even enacted.”
Fish and Wildlife officials this week said data from researchers in 21 states and Canadian provinces across the lion’s former eastern North American range “indicate the eastern cougar likely disappeared forever at least 70 years ago.”
The removal of the subspecies from the ESA will take effect Feb. 22.
As for reported sightings in our backyard or elsewhere in Virginia, officials said people probably saw “bobcats,” or other animals with tails. In extremely rare cases people in the East might have spotted “released or escaped captives” or “animals dispersing from the West.”
“Accounts suggest that most eastern cougars disappeared in the 1800s, killed out of fear for human and livestock
safety and were victims of massive deforestation and overharvesting of whitetailed deer, the cougar’s primary prey,” said the service, which added that the last official confirmed sightings of eastern cougars were in Maine in 1938 and New Brunswick in 1932.
That said, the service confirmed, wild cougar populations in the West “have been expanding their range eastward in the last two decades. While individual cougars have been confirmed throughout the Midwest, evidence of wild cougars dispersing farther east is extremely rare. In 2011, a solitary young male cougar traveled about 2,000 miles from South Dakota through Minnesota, Wisconsin and New York, and was killed
on a Connecticut highway. A cougar of unknown origin was also killed in Kentucky in December 2014.”
Double trouble
Instead of warning about this year’s deadly cold and flu season, our nearby Blue Ridge Poison Center is warning about cold and flu medications:
“Some people wrongly assume that twice as much medicine will give twice the relief of symptoms. In fact, taking more than the recommended amount of medicine can cause dangerous side effects. Also beware of accidental overdosing. Many cold and flu products contain a combination of active ingredients, such as decongestants, antihistamines, cough suppressants, and pain relievers. Read the labels: you may be taking the same ingredient more than once if you take more than one medicine.”
Walker Jones celebrates 40th anniversary
It’s a milestone year for Walker Jones, PC. Established in 1978, Walker Jones is Fauquier County’s largest law firm. The firm has a Martindale Hubbell AV rating which is the highest rating for integrity and quality of service. With a head office in Old Town Warrenton, its 11 lawyers serve clients throughout the Northern Virginia and Washington, D.C., area in family law, civil and commercial litigation, personal injury law, business law, real estate law, wills, trusts and estates, and criminal law.
Attorney Michael T. Brown manages the firm’s Rappahannock office in Washington.
“Walker Jones has proudly served generations of clients for 40 years. We look forward to providing many more years of award-winning legal service,” said Robert Det. Lawrence, IV, who is a founding partner.
For more information, visit www.walkerjoneslaw.com or call (540) 347-9223.