This animal has many names, in many languages. The cougar's range has decreased since European settlement, but is still the most extensive of any terrestrial mammal in the western hemisphere. It extends north to the Yukon border at 60 N and south to Patagonia. In Canada, where the cougar's range once mirrored that of its chief food, the deer extending from the west coast south of 60 N, across the prairies, through the forests of southern Ontario to the lower Ottawa valley, into the St. Lawrence valley of Quebec, and into New Brunswick this large predator is now common only in the west. There are four Canadian subspecies of the cougar.
Some authorities think it is extinct .
The other three Canadian subspecies of the cougar occur in western Canada. Although well established populations exist only in the forested parts of British Columbia and western Alberta, cougars have been occasionally reported in the last 10 years in every province except Prince Edward Island. The last eastern cougar to be killed in Canada was shot near the Quebec-Maine border in 1938, and its remains are at the University of New Brunswick. Although there has been no undisputed evidence since then of the existence of the Kerr subspecies, nonetheless, cougars are so reclusive that scientific opinion remains divided on whether the Kerr subspecies is extinct . The cougar is the second largest cat in the New World.