The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is investigating whether there is a cougar on the loose after a resident’s home security camera captured video of a large feline in Rochester.
Stephany Baez posted a video to Facebook showing the animal that passed through her family’s Rochester yard about 4 a.m. Wednesday.
“It doesn’t look like a normal cat,” Baez wrote. “It is something scary and I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
DEC investigators visited the scene and said measurements indicate that there might indeed be a mountain lion on the loose in the area.
“If this is actually a cougar, given the location within city limits, it is most likely not a wild cat that arrived to the region on its own, but rather a cat that was previously captive, possibly as an illegal pet,” DEC officials said in a statement provided to the Democrat & Chronicle newspaper.
New York was once home to a species of mountain lion called the eastern cougar, but the animals were declared extinct by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2011, 73 years after the last confirmed sighting in 1938.
