UPDATE: Photos of dead feline on side of Carson City road likely a bobcat and not a tiger, says NDOW
Submitted by Jeff Munson on Mon, 05/09/2022 - 3:50pm
UPDATE: Carson Now reader Misty Syms-Olvera submitted a photo of the dead animal, with a message that the photo was taken by her husband at around 8:30 a.m. Monday morning. Scroll to the photo and click on to enlarge. The photo was sent to NDOW, which noted that it was indeed a bobcat.
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A photo taken Monday from a Carson City resident appears at first glance to look like, of all things, a dead tiger on the side of the road. The photo shows large paws and even stripes on the animal, similar to those of a tiger.
Nevada wildlife officials, however, said further evaluation of the photo provides enough convincing detail that the feline on the side of the road is most likely to be a bobcat and not a tiger.
Mike Bohemier said he took the photo Monday morning on Curry Street behind the Nevada State Railroad Museum at around 10 a.m. and then later went back to look for it again and it was gone. He wondered if there was any information on what appeared to be a dead tiger.
"I know it sounds crazy," he wrote.
And the photo at first glance would make anyone seeing it wonder. Tigers are exotic animals and not in any way part of the natural ecosystem anywhere in the U.S. If there were a tiger dead on the side of the road, it would have meant the tiger belonged to someone permitted to have one and that it had escaped.
The photo led to a search along Curry Street by Carson City Sheriff Ken Furlong, which turned up nothing. Carson City Public Works Street Supervisor Justin Tiearney said he usually gets the animal calls and there was no such call this morning.
The Nevada Department of Wildlife had not received any reports of a dead tiger on the side of the road in Carson City either, but instead confirmed an incident this weekend involving a mountain lion that climbed up a tree in a residential neighborhood.
Even NDOW spokeswoman Ashley Sanchez said Bohemier's photo, at first glance, appeared to look like a dead tiger on the side of the road.
"I thought, 'well there's going to be an investigation of this,'" she said. She then turned the photo over to NDOW wildlife biologists who deduced it was instead a large bobcat.
The main reason being the short bobbed tail on the animal and also the color pattern in which bobcats in Nevada can be spotted, stripped and can range from gray to orange to tan, noting the NDOW webpage on bobcats.
Although no carcass was found, the alleged bobcat was likely looking for food and was hit by a vehicle. Unless a carcass turns up, all that's left is the photo and the careful evaluation of the photo by NDOW wildlife biologists who say that it is most likely a bobcat.
What is known, however, is there was a mountain lion that was discovered up a tree Saturday in a residential area off of Sonoma Street. The discovery led wildlife officials to dart the animal for public safety reasons, according to Sanchez.
When the mountain lion, estimated to be 1.5 years old, didn't come down from the tree and instead climbed higher and then later was determined to be unconscious, NDOW contacted the Carson City Fire Department, which used its ladder truck to pluck the cat from the tree.
NDOW made the difficult decision to euthanize the mountain lion for public safety reasons because the lion couldn't fend for itself in the wild, said Sanchez, explaining that due to drought conditions, there is a huge lack of prey species right now for mountain lions to feed on.
So the lions are coming down into the valleys, moving closer to homes where they are preying on deer, livestock, rodent and pets. A mountain lion was euthanized last month in the Genoa area by USDA APHIS Wildlife Services after it had killed multiple calfs belonging to a local rancher, said Sanchez.
The one captured and euthanized in Carson City, however, had likely become conditioned to look for food in residential areas, making the animal a public safety concern, said Sanchez.
"This mountain lion was estimated to be a year and a half and was learning to hunt," she said.
"If we were to re-release it, it would likely have made itself back into the neighborhood for its food source," she said. "We are responsible for the health of wildlife and even more so, public safety. If we have a mountain lion that keeps coming back into a neighborhood then it could become a public safety issue."
