Blue Mountains Panther Spotted Again

[icyfroth]

Weeks after the government declared the Blue Mountains big cat file closed, a Sydney father has spoken of a terrifying encounter with a panther-like creature outside his home.

Peter Russell told NSW Police he feared for his life after being stalked by a large, ''completely foreign'' feline predator at Riverstone, on the fringes of dense national park bushland.

It has been sighted at least 12 times in the Riverstone area over recent years. On Thursday, the member for Hawkesbury, Ray Williams, warned the government to ''rethink'' its position or face being ''accountable'' in the event of a tragedy.

But today, the O'Farrell government has put its faith in the findings of New Zealand invasive species expert John Parkes, who scoffed at the notion in October, labelling the 500 eyewitness accounts as ''at best prima facie evidence'', saying ''large dogs, large feral cats or swamp wallabies'' were the likely candidates.

The latest eyewitness disagrees. On December 5, Mr Russell went to investigate why his neighbour's dogs were acting ''so distressed''.

He said, as he looked along the path that led up the street, a very large, broad, cat-like creature ran straight for him.

''This was definitely no dog,'' he said. ''It had a low rumbling growl. It was between knee and hip height, extremely stocky and very fast. I spun on my heel and ran back towards the house. I didn't know that I was going to make it to the door.

''My mind was completely thrown by what I had just witnessed. I thought I was a goner.''

Mr Russell made it safely inside and called Riverstone police.

''The officer laughed and I acknowledged her reaction was understandable,'' he said. ''But I also explained that if some poor kid ends up being taken, and I hadn't called, I would be left devastated.''

Read more: Here

Is this old chestnut still going?

I'm sceptical, but on the other hand, there have been so many reported sightings.

It seems unlikely though, doesn't it, that a female and a male panther just happened to escape from a circus many years ago and their descendants are still turning up in front yards of residential areas?

Although Riverstone is still fairly wooded in some areas.

[freakiness]

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@icyfroth wrote:

Yeah but panther sightings in the Hawkesbury/Lower Blue Mountains area have been going on at for at  least the last 30 years that I know of!

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That would be about the time the old zoo person started having financial trouble. I don't recall if he had panters or not. He built a rather large over the top house and some sort of private zoo. 

having said that, I am not saying I believe or don't believe there are panthers out west  😄

I would be very surprised if there were

[*kazumi*]

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@monman12 wrote:

I think this sums it up:

''My mind was completely thrown by what I had just witnessed"

nɥºɾ

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That is the problem in situations like this.

Even if person is not threatened we often see what we want to see and not always what is actually there.

Few years back I saw a "leopard"!  It was about 10am, nice sunny day and i was in hurry to get on time to an appointment, driving through bit of bush near here when I caught a glance of a dead leopard in the ditch in tall grass to my left.  I saw it quite clearly; the head with open mouth and huge teeth, the orange fur with very pale under the chin and all the spots, and size definitely the of large leopard.  I got to my appointment and 1/2hour later was driving back and looking for my leopard.  I slowed right down but could not see it, had to turn around and go back very slowly looking for it.  Finally I found it, well actually I found dead Dalmatian with lot of blood dried over it.  It was the size of normal Dalmatian.  LOL

I can see how some people might feel that large growling feral cat is much bigger than it actually is.  However I have to take exception to the claim that domestic cats grow 3x their size if left in wild.  The size is inherited, and cats will grow within the margins of their genetic make up.  There is also some evidence that the outback feral cats are genetically different to domestic ones, they are more related to some Asian varieties of cats, and they may have been living in Australia much longer than we thought, possibly coming over from some islands North of Australia or escaping from European ship wrecks.

[ca04]

When cats go wild they will get bigger as only the best survive & breed. Also living on raw meat helps to increase their size.

Cats were used as hunters & also as guard animals.Over years of peting & pampering they have not developed their attainable size.

Ask Wildlife Rangers what they think of cats that have developed in the bush. 

[*kazumi*]

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@ca04 wrote:

When cats go wild they will get bigger as only the best survive & breed. Also living on raw meat helps to increase their size.

Cats were used as hunters & also as guard animals.Over years of peting & pampering they have not developed their attainable size.

Ask Wildlife Rangers what they think of cats that have developed in the bush. 

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You obviously have no understanding of genetics.  You cannot increase size 3x just by feeding something well.  I used to feed my cats on raw meat, none ended up significantly bigger than their parents, some were smaller. 

You can reduce the size of animal by seriously starving it during its development stages, and its progeny might then reach the normal size despite its parent being small.  But you cannot shrink animal to one third by patting it!   Feral cats are big - 6-8kg, but not 3x the size of normal cat (average 4kg), and the toms are heavily muscled, and as I said, genetic testing shows that they differ from the normal domestic cats.

Many domestic cats are semi feral, yet are also 'normal' size.  It is only quite recently that cats are locked inside the house at night, and in many areas people are encouraged to keep them in enclosures or inside permanently.  It is not all that long ago when it used to be the norm to put the cat out before you go to bed and farm cats live pretty much the same lives as feral ones.