DEC to review possible cougar sightings

BELMONT, N.Y. (WIVB) - Since News 4 aired a story about the possibility of mountain lions in western New York, News 4 has received many calls and emails.

>> Read the original story here.

Monday, there is a new update on what the DEC has to say about some new photos.

Donna DiGirolamo is a second grade teacher. She's lived on a farm just outside of Belmont in Allegany County her whole life, but she and her husband will never forget what they spotted and photographed right across the road in July of 2008.

Donna said, "You can tell by the muscles on the body, the length of the tail, the size of the cat. It was definitely a cougar."

"No question at all in my mind what we saw. As soon as I looked through the binoculars, I knew it, and then when I got here, as I said 135 paces from it, I knew what I was looking at," said Dominik DiGirolamo.

They watched it for about seven minutes walk right along the edge of a field. In fact, News 4 went to the spot that matches up perfectly with one of the pictures, with the telephone pole to one side, and the scraggly sumac trees.

"We saw him spray three different times," said Donna. "And two days previous on a Friday evening, I heard screaming, a piercing screaming growl."

Nancy Dobson is a believer, she took an ad out last fall in a Wellsville newspaper looking for cougar sightings, and she got 92 responses from all around Allegany County.

Was she surprised by that?

"No, not at all," said Nancy. "I've had five sightings of my own in the past 11 years."

DEC officials told News 4 last month they have seen no actual evidence that cougars have lived in the wild here in New York for 100 years, but they are willing to review possible sightings, and they plan to meet with Donna in the near future to make a determination on this.

Donna said, "I'm not sure why people are hesitant to admit that they are here. I think it's wiser to be accommodating to the fact that they are so you know how to educate yourself, to not approach them."