"It's a strong symbol of what we had all hoped for: that conservation can work and be effective," said Daniel Esty, Connecticut's commissioner of environmental protection, who also sought Tuesday to squelch rumors that any breeding population of mountain lions still calls the Northeast home.

Several conservation experts suggested the St. Croix Cougar was a harbinger of the comeback of large mammals, including bear, deer, wolves and coyotes, across the Midwest and Northeast.

Among large mammals, it's always the young males that strike out, either from hunger, wanderlust or lust. Mountain lions are no different. Because there are no known breeding grounds east of the western Dakotas and because DNA evidence tied the cougar to the Black Hills, scientists suspect it was born there.

Exactly why this young male at perhaps around age 1 decided to head east is unknown.


Though its journey sounds daunting to a human, this large cat would have found a land not inhospitable, with highways providing possible travel corridors and, most important - and unlike the landscape it might have found 50 years ago - an abundance of prey.

"The deer probably don't have a lot of experience with predators, and there's no competition for them," Wydeven said.

In early December 2009, it was spotted in Champlin, then Vadnais Heights and later Stillwater, where it likely crossed the St. Croix River, by swimming, walking across the ice or perhaps taking the Stillwater Lift Bridge. Scat collected in St. Croix County, Wis., later that month led to its moniker.

It feasted on deer.

A landowner's video camera in southern Dunn County recorded it munching on a buck fawn it had dragged into his cornfield, covering the animal with husks and stalks and returning several times to feed.

"Without a mate, it would have kept moving," Wydeven said.

It might have fed on roadkill. It definitely dined on porcupine. Scientists found parts of quills embedded in its skin.

At the time, wildlife officials from Minnesota and Wisconsin worked together to collect biological samples to be tested by the U.S. Forest Service's Wildlife Genetics Laboratory at the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula, Mont. That they were able to match so many local sightings to the same animal was considered a testament to the power of DNA forensics, said Mike Schwartz, the lab's conservation genetics team leader.


"It was remarkable that we kept getting the same match because that hadn't really happened before," Schwartz said. "We thought that was the end of the story."

But the cat kept roaming.

Tracks were found near Cable, Wis., a few miles from the Birkebeiner cross country ski trail Feb. 27, 2010, the day of the race. Trail cameras from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan suggest it headed north of Lake Michigan, but no Midwest sightings are known after that.

Wydeven speculated it might have crossed into Canada at Sault Ste. Marie, traveled east across Ontario and crossed the St. Lawrence River back into the United States by island hopping the river's Thousand Islands area.

"The truth is, we really don't know," he said.

The animal made news this May when it was sighted around the New York suburb of Greenwich, Conn.

In early June, it emerged from woods at the exclusive Brunswick School, and scientists collected a scat sample.

Early June 11, it strode onto the Wilbur Cross Parkway near Milford, and was struck and killed by a car.


Wydeven heard about the incident and suggested to a Connecticut official - a former graduate student he had overseen - that samples be sent to Missoula for comparison with the lab's database of known mountain lion samples.

"Not because we thought we'd find a match but because maybe they could establish it was related," Wydeven said.

Last week, the lab called with the results: an exact match. "I could hardly believe it," he said.