A Pine Barrens Odyssey: A Naturalist's Year in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey Book

When a creature is wiped extinct from the surface of the Earth, it leaves an indelible mark on the human psyche, as evidence by the emotional resonance we feel from stories about dragons, gryphons, sasquatches, and other characters with an eerie resemblance to creatures in our fossil record.

In the case of the Eastern Cougar, the culprit of the demise was European settler capitalism. The settlers hated and feared the mountain lion as much as they hated and feared the indigenous humans of North America, and thus they perpetrated an insidious quest of extermination against this epic and noble beast that stood in the way of parasitic settler "agriculture".

What I find most telling is that the eastern cougar was given a distinctly feminine power by the malicious rumors of the zoophobic settlers. Pumas were alleged to imitate the cry of a woman in distress, luring men to their doom. (In truth it is very rare for a puma to hunt humans)

Even if the pumas are physically extinct, (and this book makes the case that some eastern cougars still physically survive out in the wilderness) they still exist in some spiritual form and in the cultural legacy of Appalachian folklore.

End the rape of our eco-system, overthrow The Man!