Ive seen tracks (Downeast Maine) and others have seen them, plain as day. Reported mountain lion sightings are popping up all over Vermont and convinced onlookers say the proof is in the pictures. My own inclination, for the little it matters, is to side with the professionals like Blodgett. It can run at speeds of up to 50 mph. 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? Americans called the mountain " Tah-wak-be-dee-ee-wads. Its closest living relative is the cheetah. They were inevitably fleeting. Id need proof if I wanted people to believe me. Others have seen cougar in neighboring towns . my father was recently trout fishing in central Mass. We told him what we saw, and he confirmed other sightings on the property. vital part of this countries ecosystem. Catamounts are large wild cats that are also called panthers, cougars or mountain lions. 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. In the states where there are robust mountain lion populations, they are a threat to livestock, pets and, occasionally, humans. Even though the experts say there arent any mountain lions in CT, there are. 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. He/she was UNMISTAKEABLY a mountain lion: stretched out straight, long tail straight out behind him, golden/beigey color, and smallish head, little ears. You need to understand that every biologist that works for the state has a duty to deny mountain lions. He never found the evidence. Having retired from a career at General Dynamics, he devotes many of his waking hours to cougar research, a passion hes cultivated for nearly twodecades. It kills to eat but does not necessarily practice any sort of conservation ethic. It jumped 28 feet across the road. It fled when I resumed my walk down the logging road and on to my truck. Nowhere in New England is the matter definitively settled. They are much larger than bobcat and lynx, young adults can still have spots too. We also had bobcats that we saw quite often but I am positive that these were mountain lions! Last documented and killed in Vermont in 1881, the catamount, also known as a mountain lion or cougar, could be making its way back to the Green Mountain State. The animal, I learned, is called many things: mountain lion, panther, catamount, puma, cougar and more. All those deer hunters represent a kind of ad hoc search party. Blodgett liked talking about this subject. And the clincher, What would you say was the most distinguishing feature? Harrigan nodded. A few years later, though, the scat was retested with DNA analysis and found to be canid, rather than feline, in origin. But no. My parents friend in Deposit, NY, posted a young catamount sitting on the front porch on Facebook. I wasnt the only one to see the big cat. For several years, Blodgett, a wildlife biologist with the Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife, conducted those follow up investigations. To date, Keeping Track has helped conserve 40,000 acres in 12 states and inQuebec. I do this shit.. Yet dozens of. But it was also a male. Not a bobcat or a coyote or a fisher or anything else that might be mistaken for a mountain lion. It is also known as cougar, panther, mountain lion, and puma, though catamount is the preferred regional vernacular. In the second camp, there are those issuing the denials, pointing to the lack of photographic evidence, or the absence of tracks, or the simple truth that many people dont seem to know the difference between a cougar and a bobcat and a lynx and even, in some cases, a golden retriever. Wildlife management programs succeeded in reintroducing species to areas where they had not been seen for years. We hadnt seen a cougar, nor any evidence to suggest a cougar had traveled these woods recently. There was no denying that the carcass, which was examined by experts, was that of a mountain lion. I wished it were a camera with a long lens to document the sighting. Apex predators like the cougar and wolf make for a healthier ecosystem. Because he lives among them, Harrigan understands that no one knows the woods better. People could have been looking at a catamount that was not, in fact, a wild animal. Id been excited to read the news that wildlife officials would be releasing wolves in Yellowstone and thrilled, a few years later, when I heard, from a campsite on Slough Creek, the music of their howling. Newspaperman John Harrigan has long covered the New England outdoors, including writing the New Hampshire Sunday News column Woods, Water & Wildlife which ran for almost 40 years. This is part of the cougar business. Winds ESE at 10 to 20 mph. Obviously, this is the reason why the experts are loathe to admit that the species is here. Even in the controlled environment of a lab, the truth about Eastern cougars seems to be almost willfully eluding its seekers. No need since so we guess it has moved on from the northeast corner of Connecticut. Adult males can be around 8 feet in length and weigh between 130 and 150 pounds, while adult females can be 7 feet long and weigh between 65 and 90 pounds. Vermont-based naturalist SueMorse has spent decades studying, tracking, andphotographing cougars outwest. It was huge! But the landowners were excited enough by the possibility that, persuaded by Blodgett, they bought a trail camera and set it up on the site. It looked real promising, Blodgett remembers. But my eyes picked up something and I knew, right away, that it was alive. Was INCREDIBLE! I was driving to work in Greenfield heading south on 10 and had just taken a right hand turn at the junction when the big cat crossed the road in front of me. If you dont think cougars are coming to the East, think again, she said, leaning forward for emphasis. on route to stone tower on Quabbin Hill. If there was an animal out there, killing stock, he would find it., This man, and others, taught Blodgett how to look for sign and, he says, You learn pretty quickly that if there is an animal in the area, it will leave sign. The discussion of whether federal lands should be a place to subsidize cattle ranching is another question. When we reached tower, a ranger arrived in a pickup. Snow accumulating 3 to 5 inches.. . This isnt to say she believes none of these animals has stepped foot on New England soil over the past century. They are here & ..just a matter of time with photo or kill on a highway/road. Ottmann nodded. Nostalgia for the Wild The cat is dead. I had been foraging up in an area that is rocky. 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. "The catamount, which is also a mountain lion, a cougar, a panther and a ton of other words, is actually one of the most widely distributed mammals in the whole world. There are so many great sites out there devoted to. So Blodgett brought what he had learned in Wyoming and Arizona back to Vermont with him and began following up on catamount sightings. Spatz and Sue dont want to go where were going.. I started this blog for people to discuss mountain lion sightings and reports in the Green Mountain State of Vermont. Morse introduced me to her cat, Allister, whom she referred to as her portable puma. Then she fetched me a beer. She lives near the end of a gravel road in a modest, low-slung house tucked into the flanks of the Green Mountains. Its OK, he told me. Out & About | Best New England Holiday Events for 2019. 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? When I shared their story with the staff at the center where my sister lived, I expected surprise and interested. We have a lot of them here in N CA. So you can imagine there. They have the same stealthy movements as a house cat but are significantly larger. I will never forget what I saw! I have no choice but to take this seriously, he told me. We need [an apex] predator back on the land, Sue Morse told me. Vermont offers plenty of habitat in which mountain lions could thrive. So the initial assumption was that the animal was one of those captives that had either escaped or been released by its owner. If theres a middle ground in the cougar debate, it belongs to John Harrigan, a veteran outdoorsman, newspaper reporter, and widely read syndicated columnist. Green Mountain Lion Corp #256 34 Blair Park Road Ste. Something I had not expected ever to experience. Hed encouraged me to keep my eyes open for deer carcasses cached in the trees (according to Ottmann, cougars are fantastic climbers and are known to stash their kills high in trees), but I saw only leaf-bare branches. And its not just Vermont. 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. Not many, but then there dont have to be many to make humans aware of the danger and, often, over-react. 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. Bernier gets more than 50 reports of mountain lions a year. We clearly have migratory male cougars coming through. As I walked thru the beginning of the trail I spooked a deer and heard this awful screech and slowly backed out of there .. He didn't want to dispute what people are saying they saw, he simply says they need proof to substantiate it. In their estimation, the presence of a breeding cougar population in New England would likely stem from our proximity to Canada, where, as they rightly point out, DNA analysis has resulted in 19 positive identifications across Quebec and New Brunswick since 2001 (although some of these were shown to be of South American lineage, suggesting escaped pets). His mention of these encounters was so matter-of-fact that I found myself nodding along. Mountain Lions - Rocky Mountain National Park (U.S. National Park Service) NPS.gov Park Home Learn About the Park Nature Animals Mammals Mountain Lion Mountain Lion Last updated: May 4, 2018 Was this page helpful? Finally, in the third camp, there are the true believersthe cougar truthers, if you willthe men and women for whom the only logical conclusion (often reached after a significant investment of time, thought, and sometimes money) is that right here, right now, cougars live among us, feeding and breeding and rearing their young, and that suggesting otherwise is sheer ignorance, willful denial, or part of a mosaic of conspiracy. By the late 20th century, the range of the catamount was confined to several western states and a small remnant population along the Gulf Coast that was eventually squeezed down into the Everglades/Big Cypress area of Florida and reduced to a couple of dozen animals of poor genetic quality due to inbreeding. As livestock farming came to dominate the landscape, pressure on the big cats slowly mounted on two fronts: The number of farmers wanting them dead was increasing, while the rapid transition from forest to farmland meant their habitat was shrinking. Blodgett and I were returning from a day spent looking forand finding timber rattlesnakes, a species that is endangered in Vermont. Still, Spatz acknowledged that the word hope is very different from the word believe. 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. I mentioned this to a neighbor who spotted one a few miles away. As they watched in amazement, the cat casually moved off and disappeared into the surrounding woods. Predator removal was steady and unforgiving from the early 1800s . I saw an adult cougar/catamount twice within a two week period. 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. How big was the animal? When that last catamount was killed by a deer hunter, the state was paying a $20 bounty for pelts or carcasses. 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