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Trail cameras near Voyageurs National Park in northern Minnesota captured footage of a female cougar and three large kittens in late March.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources said Thursday it’s the first time in more than a century there’s been documentation of a reproducing cougar population in the state.

Over the past couple decades there have been nearly 200 hundred mountain lion sightings in Minnesota, many of them trail camera video footage. But those were all older, solitary cats, often wandering from the Dakotas. 

That's why this video, of an adult female cougar and her kittens, frolicking and feasting on a dead deer, was so surprising.

“We were just incredulous,” said Thomas Gable, project lead of the University of Minnesota’s Voyageurs Wolf Project, which captured the video. 

“Looking at the footage was and still is surreal. We never anticipated seeing four cougars together in northern Minnesota. In total, we captured around four hours of footage of this cougar family,” Gable said. “It was fascinating to see and hear their interactions — the mother grooming her kittens, the kittens growling and hissing at each other. We feel incredibly fortunate we were able to capture such a wild moment in such detail.”

The video of the four cougars — also known as mountain lions or pumas — was captured by two trail cameras that Voyageurs Wolf Project researchers placed over a deer carcass northeast of Orr.

“In late March, we received a mortality signal from a GPS-collared deer and found the carcass buried under a pile of leaves on a hillside — a telltale sign of feline predation,” researchers wrote in notes accompanying the video posted online. “We suspected it was likely a bobcat but thought, just possibly, it could be a cougar. So we put up two trail cameras on the cached deer carcass and four hours later, two cougar kittens returned to the kill. The entire family showed up that evening and spent hours in front of our cameras.”

The project’s hundreds of trail cameras had previously recorded footage of lone cougars eight times in the past three years — but none of those sightings involved kittens.

Mountain lion spotted in Duluth

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Based on traits observed in the March video, “we estimate the kittens to be 7-9 months old, so born last fall,” said John Erb, research biologist with the Minnesota DNR. “The only other confirmed kittens in Minnesota turned out to be captive escapees and involved a female with two kittens that showed up and hung around a homeowner’s porch in 2001.”

Cougars were native to Minnesota before becoming extinct within the state, according to the DNR. Over the past two decades, Erb has tracked sightings of lone cougars across Minnesota, including one that passed near two Duluth schools in December.

Another passed through the Twin Cities in 2011, before it was eventually killed on a busy Connecticut highway. 

Erb has counted about 180 since 2002, although some of those are multiple sightings of the same cat. They can travel more than 40 miles a day. The cougars were all believed to be solitary young males passing through the state from Nebraska or the Dakotas.

"But clearly we had a female sneak in and and finally snuck into the same spot where a male showed up,” Erb told MPR News. 

Erb called the sighting of kittens “an important starting point for potential population establishment in Minnesota” but cautioned that it’s difficult to predict what will happen to the family.

“These kittens might not survive, potentially getting killed by wolves, a male cougar or vehicles. They may also become part of the founding catalyst for a slow but steady increase in numbers. Time will tell, but we are clearly nearing a point where the probability of a self-sustaining population has increased,” Erb said.

"It won't surprise me if we start seeing a little pocket of them develop,” Erb added. “It becomes easier to build once you have that first group."

In past years, Tom Gable with the Voyageurs Wolf Project has made prank April Fool’s videos of cougar kitten sightings in Minnesota, because he never thought he’d see it happen. 

"It's sort of like the dream of any wildlife biologist,” he said. “There’s not a lot of moments you get to document something like that for the first time in who knows how long."

The March footage follows a sighting of two cougar kittens 

The DNR said cougars almost always try to avoid human contact and are rarely seen. The animals are protected in Minnesota.

Find more information about cougars in Minnesota — including suggestions on what to do if you see one — 

Minnesota News

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Cougars were native to Minnesota before becoming extinct within the state, according to the DNR. Over the past two decades, there have been dozens of sightings of lone cougars across Minnesota. 

Cougar kittens are captured on a trail camera

Trail cameras capture footage of cougar kittens in northern Minnesota

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