Australian Big Cats

The first time you hear about the claim that there are are large cats running around in Australia you probably react as I did about 4 years ago. I thought it was a load of garbage.

I was filming different speakers at a conference and one of them was a guy called Peter Chapple. I just knew the guy would be a nut and the evidence pretty slim. Then as I listened to Peter, who was intelligent and articulate and saw the slides of animal kills that were truly weird, and heard of the thousands of reports Australia wide I realised that the phenomena may well be real. That lecture was on October 20th , 2001 and from that day I was hooked.!

Not many people realise that we had about eight types of monstrous marsupial lions called thlyacoleo Carnifex running around our continent about 50,000 years ago. These things looked like possums crossed with lions. Some people believe these animals still exist today and a couple of people believe they have seen them.

So what are the theories.
1.Descendents of a marsupial lion which due to convergent evolution appears similar to leopards, jaguars and pumas.
2.Escaped and released leopards/jaguars/pumas from private collections/circuses and regarding the puma for example , there are many stories of American gold miners in the gold rush having them as pets as well as US military having the animals as mascots in the second world war.

I have copies of old newspaper reports going back to the 1880`s in the Grampians which advertise "lion hunts" which are bizarre.In that area there were also reports of an early private zoo which was stocked with animals like the bigcats which an eccentric owner wanted to add to the local fauna for hunting. In the mid 1970`s Deakin University began a series of field trips and interviewing witnessess to access if there were Pumas in the area.

The final up-dated report was released in May 2001.Some minor extract are quoted below. Of the pug prints that were cast in plaster by two shooters after a sighting of a large cat the study said. "The two paw prints marked by David Hamilton and Wally Smith immeddiately after their sighting of a big cat like animal at Rocklands Reservoir and at the exact location where the animal had been seen drinking at the waters edge , were made by a big-cat of considerable weight, leaning forward.The big-cat who made these paw prints may well be of a similar size to that of an adult female puma.”

And later in the report. “The main conclusion of the Deakin Puma Study , from my perspective, is that there is sufficient evidence from a number of intersecting sources to affirm beyond reasonable doubt the presence of a big-cat population in western Victoria. This population of big-cats most probably dates from March 1942 and had, as its original location, the Grampians Mountain ranges. There is circumstantial and historical support for the conclusion that these big-cats are pumas, felis concolor, from North America. Professor John Henry 2001.

I have been collecting reports and scat and spoor samples for the last few years from the Grosevale area with my friend Christine Coffee who started a data base about 7 years ago. This data base has over 170 accounts of reports and predation sites from just the Grosevale area of the lower Blue Mountains. Some of the witnesses have included South African game guides who now live here, and it would be difficult to find better observers of large felids.

The only minor problem we have found is the inability of “experts” to identify scat samples we have been sending. The two experts who examined the scats for us, who were selected by the government, kept saying “dog” when they examined large scats with hair, fur, feathers and large bones. So, we became suspicious. I was kindly given some scats from a large male leopard and some hair samples as well and mailed them off. The scat reports were “dog that ate dog” and “dog that ate fox” from the two experts. The hair sample came back as “felis domesticus”, ie, domestic cat. When the government learnt this they went into standard “lets hide” mode and now don’t even reply to questions.

The Minister for Agriculture recently sent a letter to Richmond Council outlining the work of their “labs” and the possible use of dna for identification of species. When I queried the Agriculture dept I was told the following. “Please use the internet or telephone directory to identify appropriate laboratories for testing samples.” So we continue to pay for testing/collecting reports and sending away spoor copies overseas for analysis whilst the NSW government does little. One of the few things they did try which backfired was to commission Johannes Bauer a wildlife biologist to examine the evidence and claims.

But the report didn’t go they way they wanted so they buried it, but an FOI flushed it out. Dr Johannes Bauer, experienced in big cat surveys in China and Nepal and a lecturer in environmental management at the University of Sydney, was asked by the NSW government in 1999 to report on big cat sightings in the area. Bauer examined evidence including photos of mauled livestock, analysis of droppings, casts of paw prints and scratches on trees. His findings were kept secret until they surfaced late last year in the Department of Agriculture report. “Difficult as it seems to accept the most likely explanation of the evidence is the presence of a large feline predator in this area, most likely a leopard, less likely a jaguar “. So, we continue collecting reports and are about to get some dna done on hair samples.

One day we will crack it !!

Mike Williams