Research overview: the Connecticut cougar and trans-continental dispersal

In 2011 a young male cougar was struck and killed on a Connecticut parkway, far outside any known breeding population in the eastern United States. This overview describes how genetic analysis and a trail of confirmed sightings traced the animal to a source population in the Black Hills of South Dakota, indicating a journey of roughly two thousand kilometers across the Midwest, one of the longest dispersal movements ever documented for a terrestrial mammal. The case dramatized the dispersal capacity of juvenile male pumas and the role of long-distance movement in potential range recolonization. The overview discusses how combining DNA, sightings, and mortality records reconstructed a movement no collar recorded, and what it implies for the eastward expansion of pumas.