When I was a child in Montgomery, Alabama, during the very early sixties, I can remember certain areas around town that spent much of the year buried under a green and hairy shroud that covered telephone poles, buildings, billboards, trees, parked cars, slow-moving pedestrians: the dreaded kudzu.
Continue reading ““There was an old lady…””Tag: Extinction
Goodbye – Hello.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service announced this month1 that the Eastern Cougar, also known as the Ghost Cat, is officially extinct.
The Eastern Cougar, in an archival photo from the USFWS
The animal has probably been extinct for at least 70 years, but there have been a scattering of alleged sightings for decades that kept alive the idea that there might be a few of the big cats still surviving in wilderness areas of Pennsylvania and New York. After investigating many claims and reviewing the available data on others, the feds have finally decided that the Ghost Cat is now just that, one more of nature’s ghosts.
Continue reading “Goodbye – Hello.”