I started to get nervous so I was scanning the area low and high in the trees. And the clincher, What would you say was the most distinguishing feature? Not a bobcat 100% mountain lion and anybody that tries to think a bobcat as any resemblance to a mountain lion clearly has no idea about wildlife there are a lot of false reports because of this however they are without a doubt in part of New England and fish and game has as usual covered up despite coming out and following mountain lion tracks in the snow through the woods in Central Mass and finding a deer carcass 20 feet up in a tree and said to the landowner yep you probably have a mountain lion passing through and asked for the homeowner not to speak much about it furthermore DNA confirmation of a horse that was attacked in Petersham Massachusetts in the last several years and also the Quabbin Reservoir DNA were mountain lion without a doubt they are here. I lived in Woodstock, CT in 2005/2006. 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. 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. Sue Morse, a professional animal tracker, believes that means cougars will, eventually, return to Vermont. I lived in great Barrington mass and I took photos of tracks in a field in April of 2009 (and of course lost them). We witnessed a mountain lion stalking a herd of deer. Videos - Industry Stories; Find Candidates; Indeed! I went back and told the tale to anyone who would listen. As I turned a corner going north toward Waterbury, I saw the cat come up from the cornfield, saunter across the highway, turn and look in my direction and then amble off into the brush. Clearly, Puma concolor once inhabited the forests of the Northeast, although its difficult to say in what numbers. You need to understand that every biologist that works for the state has a duty to deny mountain lions. You cant mistake the long tail. As I walked thru the beginning of the trail I spooked a deer and heard this awful screech and slowly backed out of there .. Green Mountain Lion Corp #256 34 Blair Park Road Ste. If we end up with a population, it will be the result of a colonizer female who gets here somehow, some way, and the rest will be history.. Still, I wanted to believe those sightings were real. He/she was UNMISTAKEABLY a mountain lion: stretched out straight, long tail straight out behind him, golden/beigey color, and smallish head, little ears. He never found the evidence. But there was certainty, or near-certainty, on the part of the witnesses who, it seemed, would swear to having seen a catamount. Well, I KNOW there was at least one mountain lion in NE because years ago (maybe 35 or so) I lived in Longmeadow, MA. What time of day was it? Wildlife management programs succeeded in reintroducing species to areas where they had not been seen for years. She lives near the end of a gravel road in a modest, low-slung house tucked into the flanks of the Green Mountains. For instance, a favorite food for deer is the seedlings of forest tree species. Besides, Ottmann had revealed that hed been charged by a bear in this same piece of woods, and I felt conflicted about diverting my gaze from the underbrush. They set the stage for the exotics to move in, and this has a huge impact on our ecology, he said. That animal in Connecticut makes for a pretty fantastic story but it takes more than one dispersing male. If someone described seeing a black panther, for example, then you knew right away and you didnt need to do any more investigating.. There is a reason that millions of people were afraid to go in the water after they saw the movie Jaws. His Tail was very long almost touching the ground and as thick as velvet rope. 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. Long Trail Mountain Lion roster: Myra Aldanondo, Olivia Cole-Bugay, Liz Daara, Rose Johnson, Aubrey Lanning, Molly Luikart, Camilla Marcy, Meara Morgan, Harlow Quail, . In March of 1965, the Colorado legislature repealed the old mountain lion bounty of $50, which was first enacted in 1924. Phone: . Dismissing most of the sightings as probable bobcats, Morse asserted that the scientific evidence has not been proven. Maybe, I thought, but the shape seemed wrong. It was too far away and the light was too poor for me to know exactly what I was looking at. The Strafford & Area Lions conducted its Food From The Heart food drive February 11th through the 18th, collecting 981.6 pounds of food and receiving monetary donations of $1,262 which were used to purchase food and other items to be donated to the Sharon, Vershire and Thetford food shelves. Even in areas of high cougar density, the there are far more attacks on humans by domesticated dogs or deer/car collision fatalities than those due to cougar attack. Ive attended talks with Sue Morse. ), 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. I live in Vermont and have seen, in broad daylight, a mountain lion (catamount, cougar, puma). 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. We got a picture of our culprit, he says, that very first night.. Ottmann nodded. I do this shit.. Reported mountain lion sightings are popping up all over Vermont and convinced onlookers say the proof is in the pictures. 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. I saw on three occasions in about the same location a beautiful mtn lion with the long bushytail that curves at the end. 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. The last catamount in Vermont is finally, officially, certainly dead. And, then, some species didnt need any help from humans but managed to extend their range into now-recovered and suitable habitats. We clearly have migratory male cougars coming through. I had a pair of good binoculars in my coat pocket. Humans and wildlife MUST learn to live along side each other and we MUST learn to respect nature. There were caribou antlers mounted above the front doors, and the interior walls were covered in row upon row of books; a long table was piled high with still more books in seemingly random arrangements. I also had a coworker report a similar experience around the same time. Until 2011, that question rested upon a hypothetical. Its not a bear, not a dog, not a deer, not a bobcat. Nostalgia for the Wild 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. But perhaps an even larger portion is the product of his enduring faith in the men and womanloggers, hunters, trapperswhose vocations and avocations have instilled in them a deep familiarity with wild places and the creatures who inhabit them. Id splurged on them. Bill and I are full-throttle. A few years later, though, the scat was retested with DNA analysis and found to be canid, rather than feline, in origin. Theyre here. 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. In this case, there was the carcass of a deer, recently killed in the area where a couple had reported seeing what looked like a mountain lion on land they owned. 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. A 140-pound male mountain lion was hit by a car and killed in 2011 in Milford, Connecticut. The animal was too small and it lacked the long, sinuous tail of the catamount. I knew it had to have been from a mountain lion Ive seen bobcats and their tracks and from the size of the deer carcass Im convinced there are mountain lions amongst us in Massachusetts! 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. She said it jumped up on the neighbors stone wall which was pretty high and walked across it. And, furthermore, the animal still had its claws, though those have usually been removed from captive animals. Check out 4 Seconds Until Impact by Bruce Hemming, or Cat Urbigkits books about predator attacks in unlikely places . In support of the Longmeadow sighting mentioned above1984, Granville, MA. Blodgett liked talking about this subject. It jumped 28 feet across the road. The tavern was quiet except for some hard-rock music playing on the radio, the murmur of a handful of men at the bar, and us. Harrigan nodded. I could hear the steady rush of traffic on Route 315. I was aware, too, of how a certain mythology surrounding the animal had taken root in Vermonts culture and even its identity: The University of Vermonts athletic teams, for instance, are known as the Vermont Catamounts, and their logo features a snarling cat lunging through the cleft of a V., I met with Morse at her home in Jericho. Ive seen tracks (Downeast Maine) and others have seen them, plain as day. If this habitat can support them, it should. Theres probably 100 in Connecticut, Ottmann interrupted, rolling a cigarette as he spoke. Still, there is no saying that it will not happen. Was INCREDIBLE! My encounter was in Middlesex, VT along the river road (Route 2) just below I89. There was a tin of American Spirit tobacco on the table (Ottmanns), a laptop (Bettys), a notebook (mine), and a tumbler of Bacardi and Coke (Ottmanns again). Put bluntly, Morse does not believe that New England is home to cougars. And, in the real world, a black bears fatal attack on a hiker in New Jersey last year made many people reconsider their warm feelings for that animal. Perhaps, then, the ultimate question isnt whether cougars are among us, but rather how we can encourage them to settle here. 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. What color was it? A far less likelyenvironment for finding a mountain lion than just about anywhere in Vermont. The animal, I learned, is called many things: mountain lion, panther, catamount, puma, cougar and more. Respect predators, protect them but dont worship or try to hug them! The tail, I said. Video - Trade Show Recaps; Videos - Can We Find a Time to Talk? The reasons for this conspiracy vary depending upon whom you talk to, but they coalesce around the idea that wildlife agencies would be inconvenienced by the cougars presence, as theyd be forced to respond in ways that would tax their resources. We also had bobcats that we saw quite often but I am positive that these were mountain lions! Our hunter friend was hunting in central NH when they came upon an adult deer carcass way up in a tree. He coined the term landscape of fear to describe the relationship between predator and prey in the wild. People in Colorado communities might need to warn their children and to look over their own shoulders when they were out jogging, but not here. 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. Green Mountain Lion Corp #256 34 Blair Park Road Ste. Stupid me grabbed my camera and a stick as to protect myself ( yes stupid idea as I could stop this thing from attacking me lol. Now, ocelots are critically endangered and jaguarundis might be completely gone. Harrigans interest in cougars was sparked in the late 70s, after he took ownership of The Coos County Democrat and began noticing the steady influx of reported sightings. 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. Yet dozens of. To date, Keeping Track has helped conserve 40,000 acres in 12 states and inQuebec. Its closest living relative is the cheetah. Somebody in the NC Legislature believes, because lions are now protected by law. We need [an apex] predator back on the land, Sue Morse told me. The discussion of whether federal lands should be a place to subsidize cattle ranching is another question. Then saw him a few more times from further away across the road and along the edge sometimes of the woods. Less likelyenvironment for finding a mountain lion than just about anywhere in Vermont from. 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