Federal officials say they're pulling the eastern cougar off the endangered species list. Scientists say the big cats that roamed the eastern U.S. and Canada for thousands of years actually went extinct decades ago.

Meaghan Racey with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said, "Essentially we really are correcting something that listed a species despite its having gone extinct many, many decades ago, even before the Endangered Species Act was even enacted in 1973. The last record we have of eastern cougars is actually from Maine in 1938."

People continue to report seeing eastern cougars in the wild, including sightings here in the North Country. Racey said that before scientists moved to declare the species extinct, they investigated hundreds of cases.