On September 12,1993, Ted Maclin, a graduate student at the University of Tennessee, was driving along the Clingman's Dome Road in Great Smoky Mountains National Park when he saw a mountain lion cross the road about 200 yards in front of his vehicle. The incident occurred about two miles east of the Clingman's Dome parking area.

This cougar sighting was not far from the location where Colleen Bames watched a "large mountain lion" cross Newfound Gap Road at 1:45 p.m. on November 12, 1992. A dozen miles to the west, on the evening of April 21, 1991, the director of a major North Carolina natural history museum observed a single cougar making its way across the treeless expanse of Spence Field Bald.

All of these sightings were reported to Park Headquarters, where they were added to the species observation log maintained by the Park. The log lists 29 Felis concolor sightings in the Park dating back to 1938.

Cougar sightings in the Southem Appalachians are not restricted to the wilderness areas of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. On April 23, 1991 a visitor from England reported seeing a large cat standing in the middle of the Blue Ridge Parkway at milepost 425 (near the Shining Rock -Wilderness Area). The animal was described as having a body length of 3 to 4 feet, with a tail about as long as the body. The sighting was reported to Parkway officials, who receive an average of about five cougar sightings per year in North Carolina, mostly centered around the Shining Rock and Craggy Gardens areas. At least one Parkway cougar sighting, of a female and two kittens near Mt. Pisgah in 1977, was made by a Parkway Naturalist.

Do wild cougars inhabit the Southern Appalachians? If not, what animal are these credible observers seeing and reporting?

In 1977, The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Forest Service cosponsored a three-year study to try to answer these questions. These agencies were spurred into action when several environmental groups threatened to file suit to halt timber harvests in areas where cougars had been reported to have been seen.

The study was conducted by Robert Downing, Headquartered at Clemson University. He investigated hundreds of reports of cougar sightings, tracks and screams and came up empty. Screaming cougars turned out to be barking gray foxes. Cougar tracks transformed into dog, bobcat, or bear prints upon further investigation. Black panthers turned into Labrador retrievers. Still, Downing found it hard to believe that so many observers could be wrong.

Two roadkilled cougars have been recovered from North Carolina in recent years, both from the eastern part of the state. One carcass had a tattooed ear, the other had no front claws. Obviously, these specimens were not from a breeding population of native cougars. One report of a cougar jumping onto the roof of a mobile home near Brevard turned out to be a flying squirrel!

Can cougars survive in the Southern Appalachians today? Their primary prey species, the white-tailed deer, is perhaps more abundant today than ever. If any cougars at all made it through the lean years at the turn of the century, we would expect the population to be growing now with the abundance of prey and establishment of safe refuges in the Smoky Mountains Park and other wilderness areas.

Cougars roam widely in search of prey. They regularly cross roads and highways. In the Florida Everglades, where a closely monitored population of a few dozen cougars persists today, automobiles kill one or more cougars per year. Why has there never been a cougar killed by an automobile in the Southern Appalachians?

Wildlife office A.E. Ammonds, who for the past 30 years has patrolled an area of Western North Carolina which includes such prime cougar habitat as Shining Rock and the Harmon Den area adjacent to the Smokies Park, has found no concrete evidence of a viable cougar population. He points out that cougars are easily treed by hunting dogs and in Western states are hunted as well as captured for scientific study through use of dogs. In all his years in Western North Carolina, he knows of no instance where a cougar has been treed by the highly skilled hunters and their dogs who annually scour the Harmon Den area in search of black bears and raccoons. Why have the dogs never treed a cougar?

No zoo in the world exhibits a black, or melanistic, cougar. Yet the majority of cougar sightings refer to "black panthers." Why? Because the legend persists. Cougars, not foxes or raccoons, scream in the night. Domestic animals are frightened in the moonlight by mountain lions, not bobcats or bears. And the panther of legend is black, as black as the night noises which tell of its presence.

The Nature Center has acquired two cougars in recent years, both of which were in the possession of individuals who were unprepared to make a lifetime commitment to these animals. How many other individuals find it simpler, later their exotic pet has passed the "cute and cuddly and easy to feed" stage, to simply drive to a remote site, perhaps bordering a wilderness area, and give their captive-raised, declawed and unskilled animal the "gift" of freedom?

The legend persists because we want it to persist. We want the mountains to be wild. We want wolves to howl at night. We want cougars to stalk deer. We want elk to pass silently along streams, larger than a dream, larger than life.

It is March 10, 1991. Park employee Gary Skinner and Arthur Stupka, former Chief Naturalist of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, are standing by their Park Service truck at the end of Cataloochee Road. They are staring intently into the last cleared field to the right of the road, near a row of apple trees at the far end of the field, beneath the rising ridges of unbroken forest stretching to the horizon. The deer are acting spooky. They are informed by a tourist that a large cat ran out into the field, then ran back into the woods. The deer are acting very skittish. They watch for about thirty minutes, but the cat does not reappear.