Cougar Sighting In FDL County

A cougar moved through Fond du Lac County early this month. A trail camera captured a photo of the animal in the Rosendale area. Jane Wiedenhoeft is an assistant large carnivore specialist with the DNR. She says it sure looks like a cougar in the photo. She says, “Not many very many photos are as clear as this one were. This animal looks pretty obviously like a cougar.” She notes there were quite a few cougar sightings in Wisconsin last year including sightings near Merrill and Antigo last month. This may be the first real sighting in Fond du Lac County, although there were reported sightings of a cougar in the Eden area in the summer of 2012. Wiedenhoeft says typically it’s a young male cougar looking for a mate that travels through the area. She says, “So those young males sometimes can disperse pretty far looking for a mate. And they get this far and they have a long ways to go to find any other cougars so they just usually keep going.” The photo caught on the trail camera in the Rosendale area on January 5th was the latest sighting of a cougar in the state and the farthest south.   

DNR Map Of cougar sightings.