The elusive, solitary and imperiled American Lion: puma concolor, cougar, panther, ghost cat, is the largest of the small cat species and roamed the full range of the continental United States and Europe, that is until the late 1600s when practically every nation on earth put out a bounty on them. By 1931 the US Congress passes the Animal Damage Control Act, giving the Secretary of Agriculture broad authority to expand "the destruction of mountain lions, wolves, coyotes, bobcats, prairie dogs, gophers, ground squirrels, jackrabbits, and other animals injurious to agriculture, horticulture, for
|