Does Mount Ainslie have a resident panther? One hiker swears it does

Emma Miller describes a “strange experience” while hiking up Mount Ainslie last week.

It’s a walk she’s done “hundreds of times before”, normally accompanied along the way by kangaroos, wallabies, rabbits, and even the odd echidna.

But around dusk last week she claims to have seen something entirely different – “a big black animal leap down the mountain”.

“It looked like a black panther to me, and since it was so close, I was a bit shocked … shuddering to think what might have happened if I had happened to be on its path,” she wrote to the Canberra Notice Board Group on Facebook.

“It definitely was not a wallaby, as it was much bigger … The sun had just set but there was still a lot of light and hence good visibility.

“After sighting that animal today, I am scared to venture there after it is dark.

“I am pretty sure I saw this animal, and I know I am not hallucinating. Hundreds of people hike up Mount Ainslie everyday so I am sure someone might have sighted one at some stage.

“I wanted to share so people can be aware and be careful if they choose to venture out there by themselves after dark.”

Claimed sightings of panthers in Australia are nothing new.

The popular theory goes that the US Navy kept them as mascots during World War II, but rather than take them back home at the end of the war in the 1940s, the troops elected to dump them along the coastlines of Australia and New Zealand instead.

A more believable story is that over the years some have escaped from zoos, circuses and illegal pet owners and they scratched out a living in the bush.

Many commenters responded to Emma about how a wallaby can look similar to a big cat in ‘flight’, and feral cats also come in black and can get pretty big.

Others have reported seeing a large black cat at Kambah Pool but never on Mount Ainslie.

The ACT Parks and Conservation Service told Region it undertakes “extensive monitoring” of wildlife across the territory’s parks and reserves through quarterly spotlight counts and regular camera monitoring.

It also maintains an “excellent database of wildlife records” collected through citizen science projects like Canberra Nature Map and iNaturalist.

“There have never been any confirmed sightings of panthers,” the spokesperson said.

“Sambar deer, swamp wallabies, wallaroos, feral cats, foxes and stray dogs have previously been sighted within the Mt Ainslie Nature Reserve, all of which could be mistaken for the black panther.”

Over the border in NSW, the Department of Primary Industries has investigated the panther myth four times between 1999 and 2013.

A report in 2003 concluded: “Nothing found in this review conclusively proves the presence of free-ranging exotic large cats in NSW, but this … seems more likely than not on available evidence.”

But another report 10 years later essentially ruled it out.

“There is no conclusive evidence that large cats exist in the wild in NSW,” it read.

“The sightings and other evidence presented, mostly from the Hawkesbury region, are at best prima facie evidence.”

But it seems the debate continues.