The last confirmed sighting of the eastern cougar was in 1938. That record came from Maine and is generally treated by wildlife authorities as the final confirmed record of the eastern cougar population in the United States.
The eastern cougar was historically associated with forests across eastern North America. Hunting, persecution, habitat change, and the decline of prey drove the population toward disappearance during the 1800s and early 1900s. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service later concluded that the subspecies had been extinct for decades and removed it from the federal endangered-species list in 2018.
The year can be confusing because another late record came from New Brunswick in 1932. The 1938 Maine record is later, which is why it is normally given as the last confirmed sighting. Reports of cougars in the East after that date have not established the survival of a distinct eastern population.
Modern sightings are not automatically evidence of the eastern cougar. Some may involve dispersing western cougars, Florida panthers, escaped captive animals, or misidentified wildlife. The cougar species still exists in North America, but the historic eastern population is considered gone.