The Case of the Australian Black Panther

[ALien]

MYSTERIOUS panther-like creatures, long reported to be stalking the outskirts of Sydney, could be moving towards homes.

With at least 19 sightings reported this year, big cat hunters believe they're becoming bolder as they search for food and mates.

Cryptozoologist Rex Gilroy said the elusive creatures - usually reported as fleeting sightings at night, often on lonely country roads - have been reported as far afield as Kenthurst, Lithgow, Penrith and Appin as they find migratory routes around Warragamba dam, linking breeding populations from the northwest to southwest via the Blue Mountains.

"They've become more active, males and females, in the past few weeks and months as they look to breed," Mr Gilroy said.

Although there is no hard evidence the creatures exist, residents have become so frightened that the Department of Primary Industries has commissioned a report on the cats, due early next year.

"The DPI is currently putting together a report following recent concerns from residents living in the Grose Vale area," a spokeswoman said. "The report will look at a range of options, as well as a review of the existing evidence."

Grose Vale resident Chris Coffey, who operates a database that has recorded 330 sightings in the past decade, said she has seen a big cat the size of her 63kg rottweiler at least five times in her own backyard.

While the DPI received 19 formal reports of a "large black cat" in 2008, there had been an increasing flood of informal reports.

Mr Gilroy recently visited Burragorang Valley, where bushman Gavin Noakes found large paw prints bigger than a man's fist at 12cm to 15cm wide.

The depth of the paw print suggested a heavy creature, in line with a number of recent sightings of a panther-like creature of about 30kg with a black-to-dark brown coat.

"There's a migratory pattern in which they seem to come out of Grose Vale and penetrate out into the back of the Kenthurst scrub, moving back and forth," he said.

"Two breeding populations of about half a dozen each have developed there."

He believes they are distant relations of the extinct Thylacoleo carnifex owen, a marsupial lion that survived the Ice Age.

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[kidflash2008]

Mountain lions have a world wide range. It is very possible some may have escaped or pets were set free a while back ago. The color black is still rare, but not too unusual. I don't see why people make a big deal about the cats making a comeback. There are plenty of deer and food for them, plus plenty of roaming space for the cats.