Late last month, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) verified a Dec. 6 photo of an adult cougar being followed by two kittens down a snowy trail in central Ontonagon County. The last time the kittens were documented—in early March 2025—they were only about two months old and alone, raising concerns about their survival.
But the newly verified photo shows an adult cougar with two juvenile cougars that appear to be about a year old, according to Brian Roell, DNR’s large carnivore specialist. “This is a historic confirmation for Michigan since it is the first time in over 100 years that verified cougar reproduction has occurred east of the Mississippi River and possibly even east of the Missouri River,” he said.
Michigan is home to very few cougars, and genetic testing so far has only confirmed the existence of adult males. The new photo suggests one of the first instances of cougar reproduction to take place outside the cougars’ core area in the Western states.
A private landowner sent the trail camera photo to the DNR on Dec. 14. Roell verified the site of the photo the next day, and the DNR’s cougar team confirmed the photo by enhancing the nighttime image to verify the existence of the three cougars. The sex of the kittens is unknown.
“The kittens’ chances of survival are actually pretty high because just like bears, cougars invest a lot of their energy into their young,” Roell said. “So these kittens will stay with their mom through this winter and possibly even into next winter. They already have a leg up, seeing as how they’ve been with her for a year now.”
Roell did, however, find it surprising the cougar kittens weren’t documented from any public or private trail cameras since March. The DNR operates more than 1,300 trail cameras in the Upper Peninsula to survey wildlife abundance.
“The interesting thing is, where were they for nine months?” Roell says. “That’s a mystery.”
Native to Michigan, cougars were essentially hunted out of the state by the early 1900s. Since 2008, the DNR has confirmed about 168 cougar sightings, all in the Upper Peninsula, although most were of the same animal being reported by multiple sources.
