Trail camera captures adult cougar with two elusive cubs in Upper Peninsula
A trail camera image has been confirmed to show two cougar kittens accompanying an adult cougar, wandering in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
A trail camera on private land in Ontonagon County caught the image Sunday, and the property owner sent the photo to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Brian Roell, the DNR's large carnivore specialist, said the verified photo provides some of the first evidence in decades of cougar reproduction outside of its usual habitat in the Western states.
They are believed to be the same cougar cubs that were photographed in March in the U.P., when the kittens were about seven weeks old. The animals in the new photo appear to be several months old. Cougar kittens, also known as cubs, tend to stay with their mothers for the first two years of life.
The sex of the kittens is unknown.
It also remains a mystery to DNR officials as to where they have been living and hunting. They have not been identified on other trail cameras that are part of the DNR wildlife monitoring systems.
Cougars are native to Michigan, but their local population severely declined by the early 1900s. Most of the cougars seen in the state since then have traveled from breeding populations in North Dakota and South Dakota. And while it is illegal to keep a cougar or exotic cat as a pet in Michigan, state officials say escaped or released cougars also may be part of the population.
Regardless of the source, the number of cougar sightings has been increasing in Michigan since 2019, state officials said.
"This isn't an animal that is ever going to become very numerous," Roell said. "They're going to remain rare on the landscape regardless of whatever happens with them here in Michigan."
The above video originally aired on March 14, 2025.