EMPIRE -- Those who debate the presence of cougars at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore can now agree there is at least one of the feline predators in the park.
It's stuffed and mounted in a glass case at the visitor center in Empire.
Sleeping Bear officials this month borrowed a cougar mount from Michigan State University Museum to educate park patrons about the elusive cat -- the subject of hundreds of reported sightings at Sleeping Bear and across lower Michigan.
"It is one of the predators that are historically in this area. We thought it would be nice to have something here so they know what they are reporting," said park natural resources chief Steve Yancho.
The mounted cougar, originally from Nevada, stands over 2-feet tall and 6-plus feet long. It will be on display this summer in the main exhibit area of the Philip A. Hart Visitor Center on M-72 in Empire.
Cougar sightings at Sleeping Bear date back 20 to 30 years, and the park started to record them in the mid-1990s. Signs were installed in recent years that warn of the cats, and offer advice on what to do if confronted by a cougar.
But Tom Ulrich, Sleeping Bear's assistant superintendent, said hard evidence has never been found to confirm sightings.
"We get these repeated reports of sightings and when we go out in public settings that is the question we always get: 'Do you really have cougars here?'" Ulrich said. "The Lakeshore nor the (Department of Natural Resources) are going to say there are cougars here until we find physical evidence."
Lake Ann resident Bob Butz, who authored a book on the big cats, said he's personally seen a cougar in Michigan and is convinced others have, too.
But those occasional glimpses mean little to scientific study.
"The bigger questions are not so much what they saw, but where they came from, are these cats sustaining themselves in the wild, and most importantly, are they breeding," Butz said. "Certainly, you cannot say the park did not make an effort to see what might be out there."
From November 2004 through April 2005, researchers studied hundreds of miles of roads and trails in all major habitats at Sleeping Bear using motion-sensing cameras and track surveys.
Researchers captured images of numerous animals over 863 nights, and identified nearly 460 carnivore tracks, but found no cougar sign, park officials said.
The last known wild cougar in Michigan was killed in 1906 near Newberry, according to the DNR Web site.
Despite the study, other wildlife researchers believe a native cougar population survived the past century, and continues to breed throughout the state.
"We have DNA from eight different animals in eight different counties in Michigan. If that's not a population, I don't know what is," said Dennis Fijalkowski, with the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy, which hosts a Web site that outlines evidence collected to support their stance.
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