Not to engage in stereotypes or anything, but of COURSE it was the COUGARS who fucked the whole thing up. ALL the other cats played with the pool. What did the COUGARS do....?
I just discovered the Big Cat Rescue channel last week, BCR is a sanctuary in Floirida, and they absolutely know how to make the most of the situation on youtube. My favorite video so far is just leopards and ocelots tearing up rolls of toilet paper exactly the way my cats like to do it.
No they won't, because enough people like them to keep them alive in captivity for perpetuity. There will still be tigers lazing around in zoos when your great grandchildren are retired.
What will be extinct soon are hundreds of useful but less photogenic species which will pass out of existence before we ever realize how important they were, and when we find out (if we ever do) we'll have no recourse. Hell, the last surviving specimen of some nondescript shrub with amazing medicinal compounds in its bark is probably being bulldozed right now to make room for gas station somewhere in Indonesia.
Oh, we got lots of cougars here. I keep expecting to see one in the backyard, given how attractive our place is to wildlife. It's the time of year when they strike out for new territory, and sightings are being reported not more than a mile from us.