Video - Trade Show Recaps; Videos - Can We Find a Time to Talk? Was INCREDIBLE! They are here & ..just a matter of time with photo or kill on a highway/road. He coined the term landscape of fear to describe the relationship between predator and prey in the wild. Wildlife do really crazy things, and you just never know.. The tails gotta be there. But some sightings were more promising and some seemed exceedingly so. Then saw him a few more times from further away across the road and along the edge sometimes of the woods. Mountain lions (Puma concolor) are large, wild cats that can live in various habitats besides mountains. It was definitely a cougar. When a cats around, its not hard to find evidence. Public opinion surveys show many more would support reintroduction, than oppose. I wasnt planning to shoot her unless she moved in my direction. Morse is a Vermont-based naturalist and the founder of Keeping Track, a nonprofit that trains people in the scientific protocols needed to detect, interpret, record, and monitor wildlife tracks and signs. 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. Obviously, this is the reason why the experts are loathe to admit that the species is here. Those who believe the growth and expansion of mountain lion populations to be a good thing routinely make the old, you face a greater danger of being struck by lighting or drowned in the bathtub argument and it is no doubt accurate. What are the chances of wolves coming back to Vermont? I wished it were a camera with a long lens to document the sighting. Ottmann and I walked farther. If someone described seeing a black panther, for example, then you knew right away and you didnt need to do any more investigating.. I was outdoor with my two pugs and quickly scooped them up and brought them in the house. Maybe you've seen the UVM(University of Vermont) catamount at a basketball game, or the catamount at the Vermont History Museum. These settlers established measures for predator control by any means possible. And, then, some species didnt need any help from humans but managed to extend their range into now-recovered and suitable habitats. Large swaths of Vermont and nearby states along the Appalachian spine have gone from cleared land back to the kind of second-growth forest that is excellent habitat for deer and, thus, their predators, the most efficiently lethal of which is the mountain lion. I started to get nervous so I was scanning the area low and high in the trees. With all the thousands of trail cameras in the woods of New England, one would think that there would be at least one picture taken of a catamount. Much as I liked Ottmann and Betty, and much as I found some of their evidence compelling, I was struggling to reconcile their more provocative claims with the restraint expressed by the many other experts Id spoken with. The Christian school also dropped out of the state . I saw a cougar in Wolfeboro NH crossing / running across 28 ; close call between myself and a car traveling in the opposite direction over 12 years ago . There was never, of course, a photograph. 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. 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. Humans and wildlife MUST learn to live along side each other and we MUST learn to respect nature. Of course. They may get here, Doug Blodgett said to me one afternoon. 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. The tail, I said. 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. I saw on three occasions in about the same location a beautiful mtn lion with the long bushytail that curves at the end. I will never forget what I saw! As I walked thru the beginning of the trail I spooked a deer and heard this awful screech and slowly backed out of there .. 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). My encounter was in Middlesex, VT along the river road (Route 2) just below I89. Betty had driven up from his home in Rhode Island. She lives near the end of a gravel road in a modest, low-slung house tucked into the flanks of the Green Mountains. Bearded, bowler hat, expression impenetrable behind facial hair and the stoicism of an earlier era. There was one photographed on a porch in Greenwich, CT, looking in the patio window that made national news a decade ago. Escapes by these animals were not impossible. I had seen only one in my life and it was not in Vermont, where the mountain lion was officially extinct, the last one having been killed in 1881. Some with cameras. We were talking about those animals, like coyotes and turkeys, that have re-established themselves in Vermont and, unlike the rattlers, are thriving. 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. Morse founded Keeping Track in the belief that getting citizens interested and engaged in wildlife will have the knock-on effect of getting them interested and engaged in how land-use decisions affect wild populationsand might provide the impetus for conservation efforts. How did I know? We need [an apex] predator back on the land, Sue Morse told me. 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? I saw one yesterday in Windsor Cty Vermont. She said it was long and thick. Middlebury, Vermont | Could You Live Here? Mid Vermont Christian School Eagles forfeited their girls basketball playoff game on Tuesday against Long Trail School Mountain Lions. Its closest living relative is the cheetah. We really must establish first that these beautiful animals SHOULD be in every state that was once THEIR habitat. All of us with rifles, most of them scoped. There are so many great sites out there devoted to. But other hard evidence of the big cats presence is elusive. Indeed, in 2011, a male cougar was hit and killed by a car in Milford, Connecticut; through its DNA, wildlife biologists were able to trace the cat back to South Dakotas Black Hills, some 2,000 miles distant. They are here in the Catskill Mountains, so named for the magnificent felines. My assumption is it was the same animal. The light was failing and I was on my way out of the woods. 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. Probably are lions in western NC, too. Unlike male cougars, the femaleslike this Montana cat with her cubdont tend to strike out for new territory, which makes it unlikely that a breeding population would establish itself far from the cougars current habitatsbut not impossible. Photo courtesy of Dave O'Donnell. It jumped 28 feet across the road. Fear is actually one of the most powerful ecological forces we know, and its a really important management tool., According to Laundre, the problems caused by a relatively fear-free ecosystem are not always obvious, in part because they can take decades to fully manifest. My own inclination, for the little it matters, is to side with the professionals like Blodgett. Videos. When I shared their story with the staff at the center where my sister lived, I expected surprise and interested. People clearly arent lying when they say they saw a cougar; [the sighting] has a profound effect on them.. The first time was in the yard which was surrounded by woods. Where I live bears, wolves cougars etc roamed freely and now sadly if one of those apex predators is spotted our DNR will usually destroy it. Wildlife is unpredictable (and several people go missing in wild areas, parks especially, every year -Probably not because of alien abduction). 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. She favors plaid shirts, green Dickies work pants, and hiking boots, and she chided me for shaking her hand too gently. 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. It seems humans just cant resist destroying these animals and either dont realize or dont care what damage we have done to our natural environment over the centuries. They have a right to exist here and they contribute to healthier prey species. We have a lot of them here in N CA. The mountain lionalso known as the cougar, puma, panther, or catamountis a large cat species native to the Americas. He and his clients were 100% sure of what they saw, and its very difficult to imagine any other animal being mistaken for a cougar in this case. The animal was shot in the town of Barnard on Thanksgiving Day 1881 by a man named Alexander Crowell. 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. One cat will leave more than 10,000 tracks per day. The debate rages in Maine, where the last confirmed cougar kill occurred in 1938, and in New Hampshire, where the last confirmed kill was in 1885. Inslerman said the DEC received about a half-dozen calls reporting sightings of mountain lions last year; two calls this week. I mentioned this to a neighbor who spotted one a few miles away. My stepfather had been a hunter and was no stranger to seeing animals in the woods and countryside, so when they came up over a knoll in the road and saw a large cat looking at them, he saw the face and thought, bobcatuntil they then saw the rest of the animals body: huge, beautifully tawny colored, and in possession of what my mother described as a very long tail, that was as thick as my wrist. It is hard for me to believe that the big cats havent found plenty of space to roam without regular detection. This, said Vermont Fish and Wildlife fur-bearer project leader Chris Bernier, is why he takes reports of mountain lion sightings seriously. The mountain lion can weigh upwards of 200 pounds and it can move like well, like a cat. Id splurged on them. We lived off of Mountain Rd in Granby, Ct for 8 years and I can say that without a doubt I am 100% sure that there are mountain lions living there. No way to proveor disproveit. You need breeding pairs and theyd probably settle down long before they got here.. 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. They set the stage for the exotics to move in, and this has a huge impact on our ecology, he said. Experts need to see the body to dismiss their prejudices. Clearly, Puma concolor once inhabited the forests of the Northeast, although its difficult to say in what numbers. Among the mountain lions typical behaviors is the way it will revisit, for several days, the carcass of an animal it has killed, moving it and cacheing it until there is nothing left to eat or the flesh has turned. Green Mountain Lion Corp. Home; Apply Now! For instance, a favorite food for deer is the seedlings of forest tree species. The police and everyone else just shook their heads but she to her dying breath said she saw a mountain lion in Lexington MA. And, more often than not, when I told it, the person listening would nod and tell me about someone who had definitely seen a mountain lion/catamount in the Vermont woods or crossing a highway or, even, in the back yard. Well, I KNOW there was at least one mountain lion in NE because years ago (maybe 35 or so) I lived in Longmeadow, MA. Anticipating, perhaps, a moment like this. Snowy winter AM just before us neighbor kids were heading to catch the bus, we (myself, my dad and neighbor) all watched a large cat cross the yard and leave huge prints and a distinct tail drag mark in the snow! The reason why experts wont admit to a breeding population existing is that there is NO PROOF. The last catamount killed in Vermont was shot in 1881. Westford, MA, crossing Dunstable Rd from Long Sought For Pond into the woods. The restrictions/regulations surrounding management of an endangered species is incredibly cumbersome, and would be difficult to manage. There was the vaguest of trails, crisscrossed by deadfalls and a sharp-thorned bush that soon drew blood from Ottmanns right hand. The scientific name for the catamount is Puma concolor. I noticed that there were many great websites, blogs, and discussion boards devoted to mountain lion sightings in other states of New England, but not one just for Vermont. We clearly have migratory male cougars coming through. I live in Hopkinton, NH and saw one coming up from the Contoocook River one misty morning. Several years of doing the follow-ups, then, convinced Blodgett that there were no catamounts in Vermont. And DNA analysis shows us that felis concolor is genetically the same across the USI think it is irrelevant, but interesting. Some of them, he says, we could close the books on pretty quickly. Predator removal was steady and unforgiving from the early 1800s . Thats a reasonable assertion. A hard-to-spot mountain lion patiently waits for the right moment to attack an elk feeding in a gully at the Rio Mora National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico in a photo posted by the refuge . There is a reason that millions of people were afraid to go in the water after they saw the movie Jaws. Of course no dash cam or accessible phone camera at the time! However, many of their claimsespecially Mr. Bettys contention of roughly a dozen personal sightings in New Englandare hard to take seriously. I could hear the steady rush of traffic on Route 315. It is also known as cougar, panther, mountain lion, and puma, though catamount is the preferred regional vernacular. He was a dark butterscotch color, very tall and lanky (taller and thinner than a really big German Shepard) and that tail. Saw one on old mountain rd Peterborough N.H. a few years ago on my property followed it and ran to get my camera have a photo but in distance by time got it was amazing animal t Metcalf. The females are where its at, she said. Still, Spatz acknowledged that the word hope is very different from the word believe. But they would certainly pay attention if they did see one. With the price off its head, the lion gained new stature, and in July 1965 . To date, Keeping Track has helped conserve 40,000 acres in 12 states and inQuebec. New in PJ Media: The world having gone absolutely insane, the Mid Vermont Christian School (MVCS) girls' basketball team is likely to get a lot of heat for this, but in a sane world, they would be the heroes of the story. The animal was too small and it lacked the long, sinuous tail of the catamount. We hadnt seen a cougar, nor any evidence to suggest a cougar had traveled these woods recently. Reported mountain lion sightings are popping up all over Vermont and convinced onlookers say the proof is in the pictures. This much was certain: it was a wild mountain lion and it was in an area where one had not been seen for more than 100 years. The regions top predator, the coyote, is classified by biologists as a mesopredator (a type that in New England includes skunks and raccoons), which feeds primarily on smaller animals. In Vermont, the last known mountain lion was shot near Barnard in 1881, ending an era when the predators were such a nuisance that the state offered a $20 bounty per pelt. Vermont Mountain Lion Sightings. My mother always said she saw one across the street from our house one night in the late 50s early 60s. Although the US Fish and Wildlife Service declared the . 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. It fled when I resumed my walk down the logging road and on to my truck. 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). But it was also a male. In my case, I had seen just about everything else in the Vermont woods in the several years that I had been going out, and not just during deer season. Still, there is no saying that it will not happen. 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? But that was OK. Bo Ottmann knew they were out there. Dismissing most of the sightings as probable bobcats, Morse asserted that the scientific evidence has not been proven. 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. Their bodies are mainly covered in tawny-beige fur, except for the whitish-gray belly and chest. So I asked him about the catamount and if the animal in Connecticut was some sort of advance scout for a coming wave of resident lions. Lacked, almost any tail at all, for that matter. There is a lot of good habitat between here and the places where there are established populations of mountain lions, he said. Long Trail beat Arlington 62-40 on Feb. 7. We strolled across the tavern parking lot and ducked into the forest, where Ottmann maintains a portion of his $15,000 worth of wildlife recording equipment (hes had no luck capturing a cougar on camera, though, despite more than a decade of trying). This could, of course, be projection on my part. So it is possible that, on occasion, someone would catch a glimpse of one of these animals. No An official form of the United States government. We were about 50 feet from it and it stood taller than any labrador and we watched it tail and all slink down the side of the lawn and the rabbits being surprised out of the bushes. Coyotes, for instance, found their way into Vermont with no help. 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. 104 Williston, VT 05495. A journey of nearly 2,000 miles. Neither resemble a cougar! 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