Reports of a mountain lion being seen on Kansas University’s west campus come as no surprise to Bob Gress, a naturalist for the city of Wichita.

“Every year I get two or three phone calls from people who want to give me a bobcat or a mountain lion. They’ve had them as pets,” Gress said. “We just had a mountain lion trapped in somebody’s garage. It didn’t have claws, so you know it had to be somebody’s pet.”

He added, “What happens is people think, ‘If nobody will take it, then I can just let it go and it’ll fend for itself.'”

The sightings make sense, said Gress, who’s also director of the Great Plains Nature Center in Wichita.

“I know they’ve been seen in the wild in Oklahoma, Missouri and Nebraska,” he said. “And I know they feed on deer, which we’ve got lots of. So I’m not surprised when somebody says they saw one.

“The question, I think, is their origin — were they released or did they escape from someone who thought they’d be cool to have as a pet? Or do they exist in the wild?

“I’d like to think there’s a wild contingent out there, but I’d like to think that about the black-footed ferret or the Eskimo curlew,” Gress said. “But I doubt it.”

An avid outdoorsman and one of the state’s most accomplished wildlife photographers, Gress said he had never come upon a mountain lion.

“I’d love to see one,” he said. “I hope I have my camera with me.”

A collection of Gress’ photographs are featured in “Faces of the Great Plains: Prairie Wildlife,” a new book by University Press of Kansas.