LURAY -- In the eyes of federal wildlife officials, the eastern cougar is presumably extinct. But volunteers with cameras hope to prove them wrong.

For the second consecutive spring, volunteers in Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland will photograph animals with infrared cameras along a 570-mile stretch of the Appalachian Trail. The program is led by William McShea, a wildlife ecologist with the Smithsonian Institution's National Zoological Park.

Since the 1970s, dozens of people have said they have seen the North American mountain lion in Shenandoah National Park and surrounding areas.

One of people is Ben Shrader of Bedford, a member of the Eastern Cougar Foundation. He'll monitor areas along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The project could also help officials at Shenandoah National Park concentrate research efforts, provided the animals exist in the area, said Gordon Olson, the park's natural resources branch chief.

The 2,175-mile hiking trail is now being used as a "north-south scientific transect," where volunteers collect data about air and water quality, wildlife, invasive species and forest health, said Laura Belleville, regional director of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy.

As part of the "transect," volunteers will use hidden cameras to monitor large mammals.

Last year, the National Park Service loaned McShea and his volunteers 50 infrared cameras. The conservancy paid for the batteries and other equipment.

The Smithsonian Institution is paying for three interns to assist McShea in organizing volunteers and distributing equipment.

This year, about 100 volunteers from hiking and conservation groups will monitor sites, Belleville said.

Organizers also are looking for additional partners, as well as funding, to extend the project to the scale of the entire trail, which stretches across 14 states from Georgia to Maine, she said.

Volunteers could provide useful information for parts of the trail threatened by development, acid rain, invasive species and pollution. The program also could help state and federal agencies that don't have the ability or manpower to monitor wildlife on such a large scale, McShea said.

In Shenandoah National Park, documentation of known species, such as bear, raccoon and deer, could be useful for future restoration projects, Olson said.

And if volunteers photograph a mountain lion, Shenandoah National Park would increase research efforts to identify and study the animal, Olson said.

"If we suddenly got some hard evidence [mountain lions are] present, it would become a higher priority to study."