Wildlife officials from the Oklahoma Wildlife Division confirmed two pictures of the mountain lion kittens in the state. The photos of Trail-Cam, shared by the agency on Tuesday, were filmed in October and December 2024 in two different districts. Officials say the photos are the first specific evidence they have seen as mountain lions potentially breeding in Oklahoma.
This two -brief refusal of responsibility “they have seen” is remarkable, as in the last few years Lion Lion’s observations have increased sharply in Oklahoma. This has led many Oklahomani, including state legislators, to believe that cats are returning. The governor even signed a new law in May, which laid the foundations for a future puma hunting season if ODWC decides to establish one in the future.
This photo of the trail was taken in October 2024 on private land in Osage County. With the kind assistance of the Oklahoma Department for Wildlife Conservation
However, ODWC has long maintained that the state has no reproductive population of mountain lions and that any big cats spotted in Oklahoma are probably transient animals that have wandered from Texas, Colorado, New Mexico and Nebra. State biologists from the wild said years ago that they simply did not find enough physical evidence (in the form of abrasions, songs, flavors and the like) to support the existence of a “viable local population” of the cougars within the state lines.
The photo edition on Tuesday is clearly changing that Calculus, something that social media users are eager to indicate. The Facebook Post Comment section of ODWC on June 10 on ODWC includes many allegations that the agency is “soda” its residents and “presses a lie” for the country’s Couar population. There are also dozens of commentators’ claims about the other kittens of Kugar, which they have seen with their own eyes, to which the agency as a whole and politely answered: prove it.
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“What is the lie?” ODWC wrote in response to one commentator. “This is the first time the photographic evidence of kittens has been provided to us and reviewed by a biologist. All previous kittens observations have not been provided with us documentation.”
The agency says photos of Cougar kittens were shot on chambers of paths in two very different parts of the state and sent by private landowners. The first photo taken in Osage County in October shows an elderly lion with two kittens half -grown after him. The second was taken at night in Simarron County in December and he shows an elderly lion with three smaller kittens.
Cimarron County is the most western county in Oklahoma Panhandell and rests the border of New Mexico, which is home to a healthy population of over 3000 mountain lions. Osage County is located nearly 400 miles east and just south of Kansas, and that’s where the bigger part of the mountain lion observations, confirmed by ODWC in recent years, took place. Considering this story widely, the agency says it is able to verify 85 Kugar observations since 2002, with a noticeable increase in 2023, when about 20 observations were confirmed in the state.
This graphics show the recent increase in confirmed puma observations in Oklahoma. Graphicity Oklahoma Department for Wildlife Conservation
The officials noted in a Tuesday announcement that this increase in Cougar’s observations coincides with the increasing use of Oklahoma path chambers. They said the latest kittens photos could make the wildlife biologists sit more than these cameras and conduct additional studies on local cougar populations. But they also stopped calling these photos irrefutable evidence of an established, breeding population of mountain lions Oklahoma.
“Although exciting and interesting, these observations are just a small piece of puzzle, needed for a better understanding of this species,” says Odwc Furbearer biologist Jerrod Brown. “This is our first proof that the mountain lions can multiply in Oklahoma, a key indicator that the population is established.”