Mounted cougar to reside at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont.

A cougar that was found dead northwest of Thunder Bay in the spring of 2017 has been mounted by a local taxidermist.

Dan Cavicchiolo, owner of Boreal Tales Taxidermy, had the cougar brought to his shop on March 25, the day it was found frozen in a snow bank, off the Boreal Road.

The animal was found by Mandi West and her friends while exploring a sand pit near the area.

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They then brought the animal's carcass to Cavicchiolo, who confirmed it as a cougar. A conservation officer from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry later seized the animal as cougars are considered an endangered species in Ontario. But they let the taxidermist mount it.

"The Ministry said 'by all means preserve what you can'...," Cavicchiolo said, adding that it was a challenge to work with the cat due to its deteriorated condition.

The cougar had been dead for some time, and exposed to the cold elements before it was found in March.

"I was worried about the face, because it was really dried out," he said. "The ears, the eye lids. Very dried out. Similar to severe freezer burn. So that was my biggest concern ... I wanted to be able to capture that face. Because obviously it's an important part of the cat."

Cavicchiolo said the cat had between 50 and 70 porcupine quills in its face which he pulled out. A pathologist later determined the animal died of starvation as porcupine quills were also found in the animal's throat.

The taxidermist said the animal weighed about 80 pounds when he received it and he estimates it would have been closer to 150 pounds when fully healthy.

He said he really wanted to save the back end of the animal especially the long tail, but it was too far gone.

"The tail end of the cat - the tail specifically - the hair slid right off. It had already started to decompose quite badly. But the front half was still salvageable," Cavicchiolo said.

He said it was exciting to work on the animal, as it is believed to be the first wild mountain lion carcass ever found in Ontario.

The mounted front half of the cougar is now in storage at Lakehead University's Thunder Bay campus, but the plan is to display it in a glass case in the Centennial building.

"I was happy to hear the university is keeping it," he said. "I was very concerned when the MNR told me that they had seized it ... [and] I was really concerned it would disappear from northern Ontario." \

He said he thought the animal would end up "perhaps in Peterborough or down in southern Ontario," adding that the ministry had advised him to "sit tight." 

"When they did, and told me it would actually be the university, I was very happy to hear that. It was found in northwestern Ontario so it seemed there was no better home for it to reside. 

Although the animal was found dead in northwestern Ontario, the MNRF would later say it was not part of a resident Ontario population.

The ministry's senior media relations officer, Jolanta Kowalski, told the CBC News in November of 2017 that tissue from the animal found partially frozen along the Boreal Road was sent for DNA testing to the United States Research Station in Montana.

Kowalski said that the sample was compared to a number of populations and it was determined with a "95 per cent probability that the cougar is most closely related to individuals from the region of the Black Hills of Wyoming, and South Dakota and northwest Nebraska."