Seeing a mountain lion in Kansas is becoming more frequent but another sighting in Wichita is not as likely to happen again, according to a wildlife research biologist with the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks & Tourism.
“The odds of that are low, but not zero,” Matt Peek said Tuesday. “Another one could wind up there.”
At 4:02 a.m. Monday, a security camera spotted the cruising mountain lion in an alley in the Riverside neighborhood, near Park Villa. It is the first mountain lion verified in a Kansas city and the 36th verified mountain lion spotted in Kansas since 2007, he said. Over a dozen of the verified sightings were in the past nine months and there were three mountain lions in Kansas over the winter.
There were reports of mountain lions in Kansas from 1904 to 2007 but none were verified.
The more frequent spotting of mountain lions — also known as a cougar, puma, panther, or catamount — likely point to an expanding population elsewhere, he said.
Several bears, wolves and lynxes have also been spotted in Kansas the past few decades for likely similar reasons, he said.
Young, male mountain lions are likely to leave their home range rather than be killed by a mature male, he said. They can travel hundreds of miles.
“Most of these dispersing lions that have showed up in Kansas and the Midwest have been males,” he said.
One of the verified sightings was close to Dodge City and it’s possible others traveled through cities but were never spotted. None of those verified sightings involved an aggressive mountain lion; one instance in north-central Kansas involved a jogger being pretty close to the animal.
The mountain lions in Kansas typically travel from north to south and come from Colorado, New Mexico, the Black Hills of South Dakota and possibly Nebraska where the population has recently grown.
The one Cristin Boyle picked up on a Ring camera in the alley behind her house was between 90 to 110 pounds, has a 4-foot-long body and was probably a 1- to 2-year-old male, he said.
“It’s a good-sized lion,” he said. “But it is also lean and not bulky like adults appear a lot of times.”
Mature males can surpass 150 pounds, he said, and females typically range between 80 to 110 pounds.
Those roaming mountain lions will typically forage on small animals: raccoons, possums, skunks and even possibly domestic cats, he said.
About 40 seconds after the mountain lion trotted by Boyle’s video camera, a cat that appears to leap the fence goes running down the alley in the opposite direction of the predator. Its collar can be heard jingling in the video.
The mountain lion could also be heard growling as it passed.
The animal could have followed the Arkansas River into town but won’t necessarily continue along any geological feature, Peek said.
“This lion will likely be trying to get out of that area,” he said. “And so the likelihood of it being around for more than a day or two is low. It is most likely going to be trying to get out of that populated area.”
Anyone who spots a mountain lion, however rare, should leave it alone and call a game warden, he said.
Boyle, a shipping manager at Spirit AeroSystems, has also concluded that it was a rare spotting, and decided not to worry about seeing another. Her cat, Lily, is “too pampered” to be outside at night, so that was not a concern either.
Boyle’s husband sent her the video of the mountain lion.
‘Holy bleep, that’s one hell of a big cat,’” she recalled he texted, although he didn’t say bleep. “Watched it 55,000 times, sent it to myself at work so I could see it on my big monitor, made my boss come look at it.”