Are there mountain lions in Pennsylvania? A reported sighting in York reignites the debate
The Pennsylvania Game Commission is looking into the reports of two large cats in York County, but say the photos don’t appear to show what looks like mountain lions.
Spring Garden Township Police issued an alert Wednesday about two large cats at the 1100 block of Southern Road. The animals were last seen heading north toward Mount Rose Cemetery. Julene Seaborg told the York Daily Record one was about the size of a golden retriever. The other one was smaller and had different coloring.
Her photos and video were grainy because they were shot at a distance and through a window screen.
On Thursday, Thomas Keller, furbearer biologist for the Game Commission, said based on the photos, the cats appear to be too low to the ground to be mountain lions.
“Scale is the most difficult thing, especially with pictures, videos,” he said. “It does look more like a house cat, I’m basing that primarily on how high it’s off of the ground. Those photos were taken in a mowed yard. Mowed grass is about 1½ inches high, and how high to the belly would it be. We know with something like a mountain lion it would be around a foot, 12 inches up to the belly from the ground. Based on those photos, it doesn’t appear to be very high,” he said adding that wardens are looking further into the sighting to get better scale and evidence.
A house cat is about 8 inches to 10 inches tall at the shoulder, where a mountain lion is 32 inches or more and averages about 140 pounds.
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“We don’t want to discount what folks have seen or what they are comparing it to. It’s just important to get that scale,” Keller said.
Keller noted police who issued the report are trying to do their job “to make sure everyone is safe and protected, and that’s important. As an agency, it’s our job to follow up on these reports to make sure we have a good sense of what’s happening there. We encourage folks if they see something, especially in that area where it’s been reported, if they see something that appears to be of that size, a mountain-lion size, to make sure they report it to us. The best evidence that we can collect are good photos, video, as well as scat and tracks. Those are the hard evidences that we are looking for with this that can help us make a determination.”
Residents can call the Game Commission at 1-833-PGC-HUNT.
The incident happened in a populated area and Keller is looking for additional reports to aid their investigation. “We would expect to be receiving more reports,” he said about the single sighting.
Keller said it’s important not to put food out for wildlife and to keep track of pets.
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Are there mountain lions in Pennsylvania?
Except for Florida, the eastern mountain lion is believed by the Game Commission to have been extirpated from the East Coast by 1900.
The Game Commission believes Pennsylvania’s last-known wild eastern mountain lion died in 1874 in Berks County.
Mountain lions do remain in the western states, and there is evidence that in 2011, a mountain lion migrated about 1,500 miles from South Dakota to Connecticut, where it was killed by a vehicle.
Keller said that animal didn’t travel through Pennsylvania to get there, though, but through Canada.
“It’s an interesting story,” he said in an earlier interview. “It reminds us that, as biologists, we can’t write these reports off, we need to take them seriously, and we do."
Most of the submissions the PGC has received have turned out to be house cats or larger bobcats, not mountain lions. There isn’t a large enough habitat area in the state to safely have mountain lions without conflicts with livestock and people, Keller said.
Brian Whipkey is the outdoors columnist for USA TODAY Network sites in Pennsylvania. Contact him at bwhipkey@gannett.com and sign up for our weekly Go Outdoors PA newsletter email on this website's homepage under your login name. Follow him on Facebook @whipkeyoutdoors, X @whipkeyoutdoors and Instagram at whipkeyoutdoors.
This article originally appeared on The Daily American: Are there mountain lions in Pennsylvania?
