More Cougars Spotted in Ilinois?

Every week or so, I get a visitor or two looking for information on cougars in Illinois. Today, I got a search for "Cougars Illinois September." There are always a fair number of reports around on cougars spotted in southern Illinois, so it probably isn't worth worrying about seeing that "northern suburb" isn't in the search. Nevertheless, I do wonder . . .  Officially, the word always is "they're visitors," but I wonder if part of this is that if we had a breeding population here in Illinois they would be a protected species. Well, at least no one has spotted any bears, but with bears a fact of life in Wisconsin (spotted rarely in southern Wisconsin), it is only a matter of time until one lumbers across the border.