In the first, there are those such as myself, whove maybe heard a few second- or third- or fourth-hand stories as well as official denials from state agencies or professional biologists, and therefore find themselves betwixt and between, neither believing nor disbelieving. Indeed! And its not just Vermont. I wished it were a camera with a long lens to document the sighting. Still, there is no saying that it will not happen. Some with cameras. Public opinion surveys show many more would support reintroduction, than oppose. The 1881 death of this catamount officially marked the end of cougars in Vermont; however, the very last Eastern cougar is thought to be an animal that was killed in Somerset County, Maine, in 1938. Wildlife is unpredictable (and several people go missing in wild areas, parks especially, every year -Probably not because of alien abduction). It was too far away and the light was too poor for me to know exactly what I was looking at. I also know of someone who said they showed F&G a photo of one from a game camera in NH. Whatever it was, it was standing motionless and, I thought, looking back at me as intently as I was staring at it. I had been foraging up in an area that is rocky. As they watched in amazement, the cat casually moved off and disappeared into the surrounding woods. When he suggested we retrace our route, past lion, to see a sow bear with cubs, we headed in the opposite direction. There was one possibility that might account for some of these sightings, he says. Provided by Touchpoints If theyre in one, theyre in the other.. There was one young kid, in his 20s, who had been doing it since he was in high school and he walked and thought like a cat. Escapes by these animals were not impossible. It can run 50 miles an hour and clear a twelve-foot fence. And it was this curiosity that led me to the Old Well Tavern in Simsbury, Connecticut, at a time of day (11:30 a.m.) that does not normally find me ensconced in the dim confines of a drinking establishment. Its OK, he told me. Several years ago, I was bicycling with a buddy up Quabbin Reservoirs Administration Rd. Humans and wildlife MUST learn to live along side each other and we MUST learn to respect nature. He coined the term landscape of fear to describe the relationship between predator and prey in the wild. Body coloration can range from tan to gray and cubs are usually covered with blackish brown spots. If these animals are not in the habitat, what we see is an overabundance of herbivores., The ecologist John Laundre, who has spent 35 years studying cougars, concurs. Id splurged on them. A deer is a wild animal and it is always a pleasure to see oneunless it is in the high beams, at night. Can they really all be cases of false identification? People said that the catamountas the animal is called in Vermontwas still around and you heard stories about someone who would swear to having seen one. One summer I saw what I assumed was the same cougar several different times in my neighborhood which was near a long strip of woods along I 91 and used to be a large open field across the road from our home. ), or someones coworkers mother had seen one from the back porch of a summer camp back in 07 or maybe 08, and shed tried to get a picture but this was before she got her first iPhone, and by the time shed retrieved her camera from the living room, the cat was long gone. Videos - Industry Stories; Find Candidates; o" which translates to " the mountain like a seat." Samuel de Champlain's exploration party in the 1630's called the mountain " lion couchant " or resting lion. There was never, of course, a photograph. It is what wildlife biologists call an apex carnivore, which means it can overpower pretty much any other creature in its environmentwith the exception of an armed human. And, then, some species didnt need any help from humans but managed to extend their range into now-recovered and suitable habitats. Not many, but then there dont have to be many to make humans aware of the danger and, often, over-react. Jason. my father was recently trout fishing in central Mass. 8 Arlington (9-10) and No. I dont ever say to people, Thats not what you saw. I say, I hope you saw one, Spatz told me when I called him at his home in upstate New York. In recent years, it has been expanding its range elsewhere; moving into mid-western states like Illinois and Missouri from its established range in the Rocky Mountain states and the Dakotas. The scientific name for the catamount is Puma concolor. The captive narrative also helped explain why there had been so many sightings reported, including some in Greenwich, among the richest and most domesticated suburbs in America. There were pine cones on window sills, a well-used hatchet and a variety of animal figurines on display, and, near the television, a stack of videos including Life of a Predator and The African Lion. Fish and Wildlife Service unofficially declared the Eastern cougar extinct. One one occasion she had two little ones with her so their den must have been sort of closeby. The Spatz and Sue Ottmann referred to are Christopher Spatz and Sue Morse, two of the better-known and arguably most experienced cougar skeptics in the Northeast. Big kitty. We have a lot of them here in N CA. A 2,000 Mile Journey The combined scoring differential in those matchups was 158-77. In 1994, scat collected after a sighting in Craftsbury, Vermont, was found to contain cougar hair (the animals are prone to ingesting their hair while grooming), and the commissioner of the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department circulated a memo with the following line: Harrigans interest in cougars was sparked in the late 70s, after he took ownership of, Perhaps, then, the ultimate question isnt whether cougars are among us, but rather how we can encourage them to settle here, After 20 minutes or so, we turned and stumbled our way back to the parking lot. The last catamount killed in Vermont stands under glass just inside the doors to the Vermont Historical Museum in Montpelier, a hop, skip, and a jump down the block from the statehouse. But, I think with education and planning, we should reintroduce wolves and cougar in the Northeast. And, he says, if they were here, wouldnt one have been killed on one of the states highways where cars and trucks travel some 9 million miles every year? I think of Aldo Leopolds Thinking Like a Mountain essay about how deer decimated the forests and died of starvation because of humans incessant desire to kill. I have heard several accounts from sober, sane, intelligent people who have seen them (especially a latre, good friend who was a very competent spokesman and hunter.). Anticipating, perhaps, a moment like this. A journey of nearly 2,000 miles. And yet there I was, on a Saturday in early November, crammed into a booth with Bo Ottmann, 48, and Bill Betty, 72, of Cougars of the Valley, the organization that Ottmann founded in 2007 to gather evidence of and alert the public to the big cats living among us. Snow accumulating 3 to 5 inches.. . It has, in fact, more names than any animal in the world. Still, I wanted to believe those sightings were real. Well, theres no difference between Maine and New Brunswick, anyway, said Betty. There is a reason that millions of people were afraid to go in the water after they saw the movie Jaws. Its not a bear, not a dog, not a deer, not a bobcat. Inslerman said the DEC received about a half-dozen calls reporting sightings of mountain lions last year; two calls this week. We told him what we saw, and he confirmed other sightings on the property. Distinguished by a boxy head, big paws and a VERY long tail. These were old growth woods and the canopy had kept the ground cover down, so I could see three or four hundred yards ahead of me but not clearly, because of the gloom. Low 24F. My daughter said to me thats the biggest cat Ive ever seen. They are here & ..just a matter of time with photo or kill on a highway/road. After 20 minutes or so, we turned and stumbled our way back to the parking lot. And, if those people who said they were seeing catamounts were wrong, and not just making it up, then what were they seeing? Especially by one that he remembers involving a kill site.. Black markings decorate the tip of the tail, ears, and around the snout. And DNA analysis shows us that felis concolor is genetically the same across the USI think it is irrelevant, but interesting. In Vermont, for instance, a few dozen wild turkeys from Pennsylvania were released in 1969 and multiplied into the thousands we have here now. Running into a mountain lion can be a scary experience. Email: info@grnvt.com. Morse, 70, comports herself in a friendly and no-nonsense manner. The guide told him earlier in the summer he and a couple clients had watched a moutain lion come down to the bank of the Deerfield River just upstream and take a small deer, fawn, drag it into the woods and it kill it, they could hear the screams of the deer as the cougar finished the job. Maybe you've seen the UVM(University of Vermont) catamount at a basketball game, or the catamount at the Vermont History Museum. People could have been looking at a catamount that was not, in fact, a wild animal. People like you are the problem and cause of extinctions. But I dont think it will happen any time soon.. Perfect conditions, then, for thinking you saw something. But I learned something else in my ad hoc researchesnamely that this was a question that aroused a lot of passion in people. I lived in Woodstock, CT in 2005/2006. One day I most certainly watched him/her being chased up and down our chain link fence by a neighbors large dog who was barking insanely and couldnt quite catch the cougar, who finally made it away from the fence to escape the determined dog whod had him trapped up against it. Then, follow-up DNA researchmatching samples from the carcass with those from scat and hair collected in other locationsestablished that the animal had come to Connecticut from the Black Hills of North Dakota. It jumped 28 feet across the road. The police and everyone else just shook their heads but she to her dying breath said she saw a mountain lion in Lexington MA. Im gonna get hammered for it, he sighed. Somebody in the NC Legislature believes, because lions are now protected by law. I do this shit.. Experts need to see the body to dismiss their prejudices. Kim Royar, a biologist at the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, told me she receives 40 to 50 reports annually, and although she believes that few, if any, are actual cougar sightings, she doesnt dismiss the possibility that someday someone will happen upon the real deal. The light was failing and I was on my way out of the woods. . Mountain lions are large, tan cats. The animal was shot in the town of Barnard on Thanksgiving Day 1881 by a man named Alexander Crowell. Regarding a breeding population that is the unknown. Vermont offers plenty of habitat in which mountain lions could thrive. No doubt of what it was; size, color and recognizable tail. I saw a Mountain Lion in 2007 in Northfield, MA at the junctions of Rtes 10 and 63. The animal that was killed in Connecticut proved that. I thought about why this might be and the best I could come up with for an answer is that we feel a kind of nostalgia for the wild. If LTS can take care of business in that one, it would host the winner of the Bennington County matchup between No. I had a clear look, through the glasses at a bobcat. Mid Vermont Christian School Eagles forfeited their girls basketball playoff game on Tuesday against Long Trail School Mountain Lions. Or, if it does, when that will be. Earlier in the year, Id attended one of these presentations, and even in the tiny village of Woodbury, Vermont, on a stiflingly hot summer evening, nearly 100 people showed up to hear her speak and see her photographs (Morse is a magnificent wildlife photographer). We witnessed a mountain lion stalking a herd of deer. Vermont Mountain Lion Sightings Also known as cougars, panthers or pumas, mountain lions range in color from tan to grey, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service. They knew what they were doing, Blodgett says. Was INCREDIBLE! Others have seen cougar in neighboring towns . The second occasion was on the way to work when I saw the cougar/catamount crossing Route 44. Theyre here. Still, Spatz acknowledged that the word hope is very different from the word believe. The key to Morses assertion can be found in the term breeding population. Although the fact that cougars have traveled through New England is irrefutable (a DNA-confirmed roadkill is hard to deny), Morse believes its unlikely that they have settled here and created a self-sustaining population. When that last catamount was killed by a deer hunter, the state was paying a $20 bounty for pelts or carcasses. Face to face, maybe, with a sure enough catamount. Although the US Fish and Wildlife Service declared the . Neither resemble a cougar! Chance of snow 90%. The animal, I learned, is called many things: mountain lion, panther, catamount, puma, cougar and more. Well, I KNOW there was at least one mountain lion in NE because years ago (maybe 35 or so) I lived in Longmeadow, MA. It was his great coolness and daring (either that, or fear) that enabled Crowell to shoot the animal at a distance of one rod only (roughly 16 feet), first hitting it in the leg with his shotgun, then dispatching it with a bullet to the head from a borrowed rifle. The catamount is a creature of stealth and concealment; it stalks its prey, which on the EasternSeaboard would likely be deer, moose, porcupines, beavers, and domestic livestock. It was definitely a cougar. They were also reluctant to certify that turkey and moose had returned the Quabin reservoir lands for many years after locals reported seeing them. Blodgett liked talking about this subject. Check out 4 Seconds Until Impact by Bruce Hemming, or Cat Urbigkits books about predator attacks in unlikely places . First about the animal, itself, and then about the lore and the possibility that the catamount was not, in fact, extinct in Vermont. It looked real promising, Blodgett remembers. Theymay not be looking, specifically, for a catamount. Out & About | Best New England Holiday Events for 2019. He never found the evidence. The solitary animal seeks out new territory and eventually a new population will be established. The Great Divide | Are There Mountain Lions in New England. Scat, tracks, lays, scratch mounds youll see these things.. In the United States the animal could, at one time, be found in all the states but with civilization, came a decline, the Vermont experience being more or less typical. Probably are lions in western NC, too. This Everglades panther population has recently recovered after wildlife biologists brought in some animals from Texas to breed with the last few native cats and this story is typical of the conservation ethic that has taken hold in the United States. The expert opinion held up until a man was killed by a Great White not too far away. The discussion of whether federal lands should be a place to subsidize cattle ranching is another question. Winds ESE at 10 to 20 mph. As pets or for exhibit. She lives near the end of a gravel road in a modest, low-slung house tucked into the flanks of the Green Mountains. It continues in Connecticut, where that South Dakota cat was killed in 2011, and in Massachusetts, despite two credible reports in the past quarter century (in one case, DNA-confirmed scat; in the other, verified tracks). The tails gotta be there. Maybe, I thought, but the shape seemed wrong. So long as the tails there, that is. If these people say they saw something, Im going to listen., If theres one thing people on all sides of the debate can agree on, its that a breeding population of cougars is essential to the overall health of New Englands ecosystems, which currently lack an apex predator. No need since so we guess it has moved on from the northeast corner of Connecticut. But other hard evidence of the big cats presence is elusive. If seen bobcats and moose and coyotes and coy dogs ! At Green Mountain Lion Corp, we specialize in placing professionals in a variety of industries. Threat of Being Attacked The evidence, he says, just wasnt there., Mountain Lions Revisit Kill Sites His Tail was very long almost touching the ground and as thick as velvet rope. What set it off was a National Geographic special on mountain lions in California, right after my daughter and I had two encounters in my driveway, Betty told me. He is a consummate storyteller, and he wears on his sleeve his affection for the region and the hard-working, commonsense people who inhabit it. Two mountain lion encounters in his driveway. I wasnt the only one to see the big cat. Obviously, this is the reason why the experts are loathe to admit that the species is here. Indeed, one of her steadiest sources of funding for Keeping Track is a presentation on cougars that has been known to draw more than 500 audience members. This could, of course, be projection on my part. But some sightings were more promising and some seemed exceedingly so. Harrigan nodded. Videos. Several years ago, I saw what was definitely a cougar walking along a street. They were also seen at other times by members of my family and other people in the neighborhood. The last catamount in Vermont is finally, officially, certainly dead. Prior to the mid-1990s, the late Wildlife Professor Harold Hitchcock of Middlebury College, became Vermont's Official Big Cat 'hunter', who sought evidence of the Big Cats across the Maple State. Then, a mountain lion was run over by an SUV on the outskirts of New Haven, Connecticut. I live in Hopkinton, NH and saw one coming up from the Contoocook River one misty morning. Americans called the mountain " Tah-wak-be-dee-ee-wads. Growing up in northern Vermont, Id heard stories of sightings, though always a few steps removed from the tellersomebodys cousin had seen a cougar cross the road on their way home from deer camp up in Canaan (or was it Coventry? Everglades Panther Tom Stearns, a Vermont Game Warden says they get reports all the time. Given the long, shared border between these provinces and New England, along with plentiful evidence that other species cross this border regularly, it seems entirely possible that cougars would also engage in international travel. By mid-19th century, forests made up only about 30 percent of New England (its notable that today that number stands at approximately 80 percent, nearer to what it was when cougars thrived here). And there have been fatal attacks. So, traffic had been slowed from both ends for a good 3-5 minutes. But never a catamount. There was the vaguest of trails, crisscrossed by deadfalls and a sharp-thorned bush that soon drew blood from Ottmanns right hand. But there was certainty, or near-certainty, on the part of the witnesses who, it seemed, would swear to having seen a catamount. I was agnostic, I suppose, on these stories which the state wildlife biologists inevitably found impossible to substantiate and, often, easy to disprove. If this habitat can support them, it should. A wildlife camera snapped the image in late 2019 and the refuge shared it on Facebook this month, challenging followers to find the hidden mountain lion. Yes, of course they are here, transients. Betty, for instance, has presented on Eastern cougars more than 300 times, gathering many hundreds of sighting reports in the process. [An overabundance of deer] means our forests are getting older and older and not being replaced. He also points to the influx of invasive plant species in New England as evidence of an out-of-control deer population. But that was OK. Bo Ottmann knew they were out there. We think theyre coming in from Canada, Betty told me. Interesting article, but it is really incomplete without a discussion of the legal implications of having a confirmed endangered species such as the Eastern Cougar in New England. I did call in a report to CT DEP and they basically dismissed my narrative questioning whether I made a mistake confusing the animal I saw with a bobcat or fisher cat. I have pictures of tracks around my car and up to the back steps of my deck in Arkville, NY . And so we come to the great divide over cougars in New England. Blodgett did on-site investigations of these, in what became a predictably futile search for the sign he had learned, out west, to look for. I wasnt planning to shoot her unless she moved in my direction. One wonders just how tolerant Vermonters would be of a healthy population of mountain lions after one attacked a child waiting for the school bus. Our hunter friend was hunting in central NH when they came upon an adult deer carcass way up in a tree. I kept trying to make it be something else because I was shocked that I was, indeed, watching a mountain lion pass in front of me. I also had a coworker report a similar experience around the same time. 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