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My mother has this awful kid living next door in this generally criminal/dysfunctional family. He used to do odd jobs for her, until he did stuff like... stealing money from her wallet, vandalizing things when he got upset, trying to take her car for joyrides. By the time *I* was ready to hire...

Also, be very careful when choosing a breeder for Springers. Some lines have earned a reputation for instability and aggression since they became popular. This is almost certainly less of a problem in field lines than show. Italian Spinones are a rare breed (basically a rough-coated...

DEFINITELY agree with Keith re predator control on public lands. I'd like to see the jaguar treated as the American Alligator has been- list it for a decade or so so it can recover numbers if it's going to, then de-list and reclassify as a game animal. Right now I simply don't think there's...

Yes, they can, but they almost never do naturally. Most cases of "bobcat hybrids" are just cases of an unusual-looking domestic cat with long ears and a manxed tail. edit: When I mean "they" almost never do, I mean specifically bobcats and lynx. European wildcats breed so willingly with...

*shrug* I reiterate yet again that I have little doubt there have been some exotic pet escapees, up to and including cougars. I persist in my skepticism that they have established a breeding population in the wild, because the sightings, lack of tracks, lack of remains, and lack of...

"Expert" is a relative term. I note they never reference if the guy is an expert on large cats, or just an "expert" in the sense that he's collected the most documentation to support the pro-beast position. Piltdown man had its scientific supporters, too. As for Keith's suggestion of a...

It appears this HAS been investigated formally by actual experts. Paper trail Edit: I'd also like to point out that I live in one of those counties marked on the U.S. map as 7 people per sq km or less. In my area, cougars haven't been hunted for more than fifty years, because half the...

"Viable breeding population" just means there's enough cats to reproduce without the whole population collapsing. Frankly, given genetic diversity between individuals, it's likely that at one time the viable breeding population of all cheetahs consisted of maybe two or three individuals. The...

No, there shouldn't be any higher mortality for kits in that situation; they should feel the itch of wanderlust and disperse long before their parents' attitude turns from indifference to aggression. Cats rarely fight in the wild unless it can't be avoided or one of them was captive-raised and...

I'm not arguing that a cougar couldn't survive in Britain- it could do so quite nicely- I'm arguing that a breeding population of them is unlikely. Cougars can have up to eight kits per litter, with the usual number being around three. In a species that is solitary, requires a large territory...

Ginslinger: I've been interested in what makes a predator a man-eater for a long time, and based on the information I have available, I'm still less nervous of a jaguar than I would be of a cougar. (Not that they scare me either. I'm infinitely warier of bears than any American cat.) For...

I don't doubt that there have been some escapes, and that some of them may have successfully returned to the wild for a time. I still doubt that they can set up a successful breeding population so relatively undetected. Here's why: Even with a relatively uninhabited area, if all there is to...

My point was not that jaguars don't attack humans, but compared to other large cats, they're not as likely to, which is still true. I didn't say there are no recorded jaguar attacks- just that, given the number of cats and the number of humans and the degree of contact, there are surprisingly...

Art- sounds familiar. Did you know the Sahara desert and the Middle East used to be grassland and forest? The Sahara's abrupt transition from Serengeti-like bucolic bliss to hell desert was helped along by some climatic changes for Earth, but agriculture and massive overgrazing played a major...

While there may be periodic escapees from exotic petkeepers, I seriously doubt that a 100-lb plus predatory cat which normally has a territorial range of up to 100 square miles could sustain a breeding population in a nation with virtually no uninhabited wildlands without a confirmed sighting or...

The history and politics of Western rangelands is a textbook example of bureaucracy and poor political ideas (our nation's most intensive flirtation with socialism) at its worst. Policy, pushed by and meant to help ranchers, instead rewards them more for overgrazing the land as much as possible...

For those that wanted to know more about the jaguar situation... I'll skip right to the end of the story and say that jaguars have been listed as an endangered species and the AZ Game and Fish commission is now actively working toward their conservation. AZGF's jaguar page Editorial...

Precisely the crux of the issue. I understand their position, I'm just using it as an example as to why there is rational mistrust between wildlife agencies and some landowners; conflict of interest. Actually, some years ago something on a much larger scale was suggested to Montana...

Art- perhaps I shouldn't say that the stupid and obstinate are more or even as common as intelligent and reasonable folk, but by their very nature no matter how many of them there are they take up 90% of an agency's time and energy. Maybe it differs from area to area, but where I come from I...

Speaking as a biologist... We're humans. Some of us are level-tempered, thoughtful, and respectful, and some of us are government drones who seem to exist purely to inconvenience others, and some of us are granola-snorting treehuggers. What we almost never are is well-paid or given sensible...