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. And there's there's no evidence of that cat's movement in that entire you know 12 hundred miles stretch of its journey. So. We're gonna talk about sightings in this part of the program as well we'd love to hear your story. 1 800 8 9 2 6 4 7 7. Your support makes this news available to everyone. And it's not really strong. Some Suspects in On-Going Catamount Investigation Patrick Tate New Hampshire Fish and Game Wildlife Biologist thanks very much for being here this morning really appreciate it. And so far we have not had any positive mark lion scats or any DNA. Have you seen one. A lot of times. Harrigan is 72 and lives just outside the northern New Hampshire town of Colebrook; he has a long, craggy face that seems almost to have molded itself after the mountainous landscape of his home state. M from Tree Hill author series presenting Diane lay back. They set the stage for the exotics to move in, and this has a huge impact on our ecology, he said. It's unfortunate that that kind of thing happens as often as it does. We will use this information to improve this page. You dont even have to go out and look for it.. I believe I saw one that's fine and I'm not looking for an immediate story. Peter Biello: Yeah some of what she was saying sounds like it would require getting pretty close or at least having a nice zoom lens right Sam like. If you need assistance, please contact the Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. So here in New Hampshire when a person turns in something that the Department believes is possible mountain lion and believes it should be investigated further. Mountain lions also have tails that can grow up to 3 feet. I mean they're a survivor. Sam. 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. Here it is. Peter Biello: We at this e-mailed comment from Michael. Caller: So I've been telling this story for five years or so and very few people believe me. Q:While walking October Mountain just recently, I am sure I saw a mountain lion. But right now youre dealing with top-notch guys. We had six copies printed out each. The deer dont eat the exotics, but they eat the competitors. N.H.'s Fish and Game department says there's no proof. It was a flooded area. So let's let's go to the phones. Someone photographed the animal at the Brunswick School on Greenwich, Connecticut about 40 miles away on June 5th. 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. Patrick's reporting has appeared on NPR's Morning Edition, Here & Now, and All Things Considered. Ive seen bobcats before, this wasnt a bobcat. And its a lose-lose situation, because theres really not a whole lot you can tell them in most cases thats going to change their mind.. Yeah I did. Spatz and Sue dont want to go where were going.. I can't. So nowadays we think of this in the Northeast as crazy stuff that people have a mountain lion as a pet. Peter Biello: Ok weird question but do they make good pets. So I know it's another unconfirmed report but you string enough of these together. Patrick Tate: So I agree with what Sam said in part that their ability to go undetected for amount of time but ultimately it was detected. The nonbelievers are going to say Show us your evidence and show us prove this to us. We we hear that there is allegedly a government conspiracy to deny the existence of mountain lions here in New Hampshire so I guess a local government conspiracy. Mountain lions are solitary and . Yes and you want to share what you learned. We mentioned that one cat that was hit by a car where it has it that it was a male looking for me. 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. When evidence is submitted, MassWildlife carefully reviews the evidence in its entirety and attempts to verify the report. Shop. Sam Evans-Brown: Well and I think and the last takeaway here is everyone I think probably agrees that any possible sightings that have been seen. So Pat you field a lot of calls about people seeing or reportedly seeing mountain lions. We're gonna cue you up and bring into the program listeners in just a moment but I want to ask about the role that Mountain Lions play in the ecosystem we've been talking a lot about mountain lions traveling and being sort of hard to track as they move. And boy it was big it had to be at least 200 pounds the thing was you and and it just made a little bit of noise and it was gone. Its documented through track surveys, aerial surveys, trapping and collaring surveys. Through DNA they approximate area in the United States or North America where I was born. Known to exist in the state for over well over a hundred years. brings a lot of. [The catamounts] movements were so noiseless that Mr. Crowell found himself in this dangerous proximity before he was aware of it, and it was only by great coolness and daring that he severely wounded the animal and perhaps saved his own life, reads a placard attached to the display case. John if you're still on the line here I was going to I don't. It doesn't happen as much anymore. Peter Biello: So if they were female mountain lions here they would be more males just because that's what they're looking for. Thanks very much. Its quite an uphill challenge for us to manage that situation right now. And I saw you cat about four feet long from nose to tail come across from the water across the road and just leap over a six foot perimeter fence in a single bound. An adult male bobcat can reach four feet in length and 35 to 40 pounds. And really whenever you hear tiny code and long rope like tale it's kind of hard to pin this sighting on any other creature rather than an outline or just nothing else really matches that description. John. Sue Morse: First and foremost if you have color or if you could see details of color look at the front of the face around the Pumas muzzle the muzzle itself is pure white. Here are some things to keep in mind if you come Multiple mountain lion sightings have been reported in . You know one of the the biggest questions I have about that is it points to how much we don't know and if in fact we don't know enough. Open MF, 8 a.m.4 p.m. (closed noon12:30 for lunch). Have there been others reporting this big cat recently? I saw it growing in Richmond along the road to Richmond Pond some years ago, pointed out by the late David St. James. Sam Evans-Brown: Well this might be a good moment to talk about hoaxes. Caller: Yeah. So so it is possible in Maine to still to to to have one but you have to be sort of professional handler as it were. California mountain lion slaughters 27 lambs but did not eat a single one However, it is more likely to be one of the pumas that roam the country. So one thing that I find fascinating about this Connecticut cat was six months between the New York situation where they found evidence of it too when it was hit by a motor vehicle. Peter Biello: Well yeah. Hawley: Yeah. Sam Evans-Brown: You know the North America had a number of large predator species when humans first arrived in the continent. Patrick Tate: If I could just say one thing. But that was OK. Bo Ottmann. Caller: Yeah I hadn't experienced blastoff fall so this was around September and I was driving from Webster into Concord on Horse Hill Road and anybody in the area would know I was right near the Red Barn and all of a sudden this animal jumps out of the woods and it bounded across the road in about two two giant leaps and stopped in the field just on the other side. I have seen them fly and do so especially into trees when in danger, either real or imagined. So for those reasons I don't believe the standards are too high the amount of game cameras out on the landscape to record images department alone through contracts had over 150 throughout the state biologists go through various deer yards throughout the year. Rick van de Poll: Well the mountain lion of course has been sort of an enigma in the wildlife suite for years and years. DEPARTMENTAL BULLETIN 1 of 13 Number: 2013-02 Date Issued: March 1, 2013 . "Of those three to five reports, one. 8 9 2 6 4 7 7. Listeners we'd love to hear some of your thoughts on this. Using DNA and physical evidence, state environmental officials said they determined that the animal likely trekked more than 1,500 miles from South Dakota, a journey that was captured by trail camera (above). Anytime at any HP broad dot org or subscribe to our podcast search Apple podcasts Google Play or stitcher for an HP bar exchange. Support for an age PR comes from you our listeners. This is why tangible evidence is so important. So I hate the idea that there's some sort of upward you know downward pressure from the bosses saying Don't you know don't tell about the mountain lions because it'll scare away the tourists. Give us a call if you have a question or comments or story about perhaps seeing a mountain lion here in New Hampshire. The American Lion The Saber tooth Tiger and this was the one that survived. 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). So that did it for me. Right. But one day. I would say that there's going to be the truth in here somewhere. Information that weed family automotive dot com sunny for today high temperatures low to mid 80s clear tonight overnight lows in the 50s tomorrow sunny highs in the upper 80s. Mountain lion reports in Sunapee could be the real thing Bearded, bowler hat, expression impenetrable behind facial hair and the stoicism of an earlier era. Seeing the real thing is always possible, but a sighting of a genuine Moun-tain Lion in New England is so rare that it is the wildlife equivalent of winning a jackpot in the MegaMillions lottery. 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). At 6:20 on the morning of Aug. 20, Cheri Mazerall had just let her cat out the back door when she saw what she describes as a "beautiful, large beige/yellow" animal with "large feet and a long tail" come over her . Peter Biello: Let's go to Mike in Epping. I don't know if she still is. Peter Biello: I did mention four feet nose to tail would be kind of small for a mountain lion. What gets confusing is when you have a large adult animal and a smaller juvenile animal of a different species you can now step start beginning talking about overlapping body weights and sizes. Peter Biello: But clearly you know you're saying like hoaxes people who claim to have seen a mountain lion but knowingly have not or are appropriating photos taken elsewhere of legit mountain lion say out West where they people acknowledge that they exist certainly knowingly or unknowingly in this case the person who sent it to me said hey a friend of mine sent me this photo and said he took it on his back porch also. We have evidence and as biologists we would find it quite exciting to find that evidence of one in the state. Peter Biello: From New Hampshire Public Radio I'm Peter Biello in for Lark Knoy and this is the exchange. On the idea of bear hunting in Connecticut. Peter Biello: What about the idea of tourism like us leaving aside the fact that it is not on the Endangered Species Act is it. Attracting the black swallowtail butterfly to your yard is as easy as planting parsley and carrots in your garden. Peter Biello: So a little bit of nostalgia maybe for it for a better world embodied in the mountain lion. So what a neat experience. Three females confirmed well ahead of predictioins, Re(1): Major news! So maybe a good pet for you but not for your neighbor if you just stop by unannounced. We live around Cold Springs Campground and it was undeniably a mountain lion. Pat do they typically just move around a lot. Kyle I think about Rick Tate wants to jump in here. You don't know what's going on. McEnroe: Scientifically, this is a case where absence of evidence is kind of evidence of absence, right? Watch. Morse has been tracking cougars for 45 years, mostly in the mountains of the West, where their existence is not in doubt. Peter Biello: Well hey Rob. Love hearing these stories. That's why we always go back to the physical evidence to support what they're reporting. Mistaken reports of mountain lions are most commonly bobcats. It's not an emerging endangered species no work no there are there are populations in specific states so the Florida panther is is an endangered species that sub population is in fact listed under the Endangered Species Act. 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. I wasn't employed as biologists at the time of a situation that's been reported but so I started digging into this report and spoke with another wildlife biologist with the agency and said Do you know anything about this. The females disperse a shorter range and once they find a vacant home range they stay in that location and live there. Carol Ann P., of Hinsdale, wrote, Thank you for the very informative article on invasive species! But on the other side of that coin there is this sense that there have been so many sightings locally and you guys Patrick you might recall the name the Wyndham McCracken she kind of turned herself into a local authority off authorities the right word but she was very dedicated to this. ghost, Re(3): didnt win the pwrball. But you can continue the conversation on Facebook or at our Web site and HP Borg. Many people do not realize how large a grown Bobcat is. When I accepted the assignment to write about my quest to uncover the truth regarding the existence of cougars in New England, I had little idea what I was agreeing to. He soon developed a five-question litmus test: How far away were you? Fish and Game looked into the labs to have them confirm the information in the reports which the labs did not. Today on the exchange we discuss what residents may have been seeing and what breeding mountain lion pairs would mean for our ecosystem. The views expressed in this program are those of the individuals and not those of an HP are its board of trustees or its underwriters. Forty years of reporting on New Hampshire cougar sightings has convinced Harrigan that the state is home to at least a handful of breeding animals. Less than a year later I found a scat on the swamp range and I was working at the time with a fellow at the Michigan wildlife habitat Federation. The report came in from a conservation officer. We rely on readers like you to support the local, national, and international coverage on this website. 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). They reported seeing the big tail and everything everything. Peter Biello: Today on the program Patrick Tate New Hampshire Fish and Game Wildlife biologist and far better project leader Sam Evans Brown host of an HP podcast outside in which is about the natural world and how we use it. He told me that on one of his many scouting trips for Black Bear he found a deer carcass up in a tree. Bats have no interest in your hair! It's not a skinny rope like tail like a housecat. How far were you from this cat. John is calling from Bennington. No doubt in my mind it was. Not yet. You know you have to have a license and it's hard to get that license a license to own a mountain lion. The feedback will only be used for improving the website. Hawley, a wildlife biologist with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, says data dont support a breeding population of mountain lions in Connecticut. By, March 2023 Fund Drive Rules and Regulations, Persons with disabilities who need assistance accessing NHPR's FCC public files, please contact us at publicfile@nhpr.org. So there is definitely no downward pressure by anyone. Please remove any contact information or personal data from your feedback. So all the other states in the Northeast that have bear populations have a harvest on their bears. But other hard evidence of the big cats presence is elusive. She lives near the end of a gravel road in a modest, low-slung house tucked into the flanks of the Green Mountains. The number 1 800 8 9 2 6 4 7 7 so promised a discussion about conspiracy theories. Rick van de Poll: Well a report that you know as John Harrigan up north has in co-ops County for about 15 years I kept track of reports and people would call me and tell me where they saw the mountain lion they thought they saw it and it varied right from you know downtown villages all the way to remote highlands of the North Country and and everywhere in between. New England Mountain Lion Sighting Bulletin Board's Message Board People even report House Cats as mountain lions in a surprising number of cases. I started asking a lot of questions, and realized theres only one explanation for the answers I was getting: They are here., You could have 30 in Connecticut alone. Women control our lives. So so in 2011 a mountain lion was killed in a car accident in Connecticut a car hit a mountain lion and killed it. In 2011, the U.S. Patrick Tate: Well I've never seen an Easter cougar so I can't say when I've handled these 10 cougars and whatnot. The term is because mascots notwithstanding right that they're referred to with a lot of different terms and sometimes they can be confused with a lot of different terms. They were able to do all that by genetics. Mass.gov is a registered service mark of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. At first, I thought it was pretty, but then it kept spreading on the edge of the woodlands next to my lawn. There'd be there'd be all sorts of you know basically a lot of hassle required if that were to happen. OK. A 2011 article from The Post and Courier revealed a string of unconfirmed mountain lion sightings in the Lowcountry. 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. Sighting of this animal also occurred in Michigan and New York. You've got you've got biologists right who are trying to make their make their way in the world make a career if you are the biologists who confirmed a sighting of mountain lions in the state that would be very good for you like you would be all over the news. Fish and Game then deny the evidence. Wildlife biologist breaks down mountain lion sightings in CT 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. Big cats used to be kept as pets in the U.K . Peter Biello: So Patrick today Fish and Game no downward pressure on you to deny the existence at all costs of mountain lions here in New Hampshire. So that's the specimen that you find going long distances. But no proof was offered. He writes As a farmer I come across many outdoorsman looking to hunt our property had a conversation with one who believed very strongly that we had mountain lions in New Hampshire. If so that's for us as an agency. The scarlet pimpernel, a sprawling plant with scarlet flowers, is a non-native species brought over from Europe. I wish I could see it again! He has also reported for the Marketplace Morning Report. contact the Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. I mean I that said I've lived out west for nine years. Peter Biello: Well Karl Jarvis a former reporter for The King's son Nile thank you very much for for calling in and sharing your perspective and to his point Patrick T. I mean yes we haven't met the scientific burden of proof here in New Hampshire as far as physical evidence is is concerned but is there room at Fish and Game For A kind of an informal nod to all of the people who have somehow convinced themselves and possibly some others that yeah there may be occasional sightings here. Anyways after three weeks I finally found the image on line on a field and stream photo contest and the explanation in the end was the person that set the camera out with another individual and they believed that someone who knew of the camera location saw the similarities put the can't picture on their SD card so it looked like that camera recorded the image that is.
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