Scat, tracks, lays, scratch mounds youll see these things.. [Betty] and the other guys dont do this shit. But there was certainty, or near-certainty, on the part of the witnesses who, it seemed, would swear to having seen a catamount. I came across a dead adult deer carcass high up in an oak tree. Looking at the mounted animal, behind the glass, had made me feel kind of well, sad. Most of those sightings were misidentifications, Doug Blodgett says. hen 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. The animal, I learned, is called many things: mountain lion, panther, catamount, puma, cougar and more. Maybe you've seen the UVM(University of Vermont) catamount at a basketball game, or the catamount at the Vermont History Museum. Some might mistake the bobcat, which still lives in New England, for a cougareven though its tail is about 6 inches long andthe bigger cats is 3 feet or more. They set the stage for the exotics to move in, and this has a huge impact on our ecology, he said. He wore red suspenders and a baseball cap. Harrigan nodded. 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. A deer is a wild animal and it is always a pleasure to see oneunless it is in the high beams, at night. How big was the animal? A few years later, though, the scat was retested with DNA analysis and found to be canid, rather than feline, in origin. Thank you; Blog. Green Mountain Lion Corp #256 34 Blair Park Road Ste. 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? Yes I have seen several pictures on game cameras from people in Massachusetts in Central and western Mass that do have mountain lions on their game camera so please dont be ignorant. My assumption is it was the same animal. Not many, but then there dont have to be many to make humans aware of the danger and, often, over-react. But they would certainly pay attention if they did see one. The one killed on the Connecticut highway was on a journey worthy of Odysseus so it isnt likely that there will be a thriving population of mountain lions in Fairfield County, raiding backyard cocktail parties, anytime soon. Winds ESE at 10 to 20 mph. As they watched in amazement, the cat casually moved off and disappeared into the surrounding woods. An expert said it was probably a basking shark. Vermont Mountain Lion Sightings. So Blodgett brought what he had learned in Wyoming and Arizona back to Vermont with him and began following up on catamount sightings. There was never, of course, a photograph. 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. Spatz and Sue dont want to go where were going.. Still, Spatz acknowledged that the word hope is very different from the word believe. Then saw him a few more times from further away across the road and along the edge sometimes of the woods. Now that USFW has declared them extinct, why not formally reintroduce them. Blodgett and I were returning from a day spent looking forand finding timber rattlesnakes, a species that is endangered in Vermont. Morse, 70, comports herself in a friendly and no-nonsense manner. There are so many great sites out there devoted to. 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. 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 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. If theyre in one, theyre in the other.. I was agnostic, I suppose, on these stories which the state wildlife biologists inevitably found impossible to substantiate and, often, easy to disprove. I had been the first vehicle in a line held up by one lane traffic on a bridge reconstruction. I saw a Mountain Lion in 2007 in Northfield, MA at the junctions of Rtes 10 and 63. A 2,000 Mile Journey It fled when I resumed my walk down the logging road and on to my truck. I have learned one thing in my career, and thats to never say never, she said. The Christian school also dropped out of the state . To date, Keeping Track has helped conserve 40,000 acres in 12 states and inQuebec. He coined the term landscape of fear to describe the relationship between predator and prey in the wild. As pets or for exhibit. Anticipating, perhaps, a moment like this. The animal, I learned, is called many things: mountain lion, panther, catamount, puma, cougar and more. 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. 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.). Even though the experts say there arent any mountain lions in CT, there are. 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. The Great Divide | Are There Mountain Lions in New England. This was, after all, a long, long way from the nearest known population of mountain lions and virtually the heart of the suburban East. 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.. The last catamount in Vermont is finally, officially, certainly dead. This was after the department sent him out west to study the behavior of mountain lions. The scientific name for the catamount is Puma concolor. And so when they come to him with a sighting, hes prepared to believe. 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. But other hard evidence of the big cats presence is elusive. There, too, is Crowells photograph, grainy and old: the hunter leaning against a tree stump, his head propped casually on his left hand, elbow to stump, shotgun cradled in the crook of his right arm. My encounter was in Middlesex, VT along the river road (Route 2) just below I89. But I learned something else in my ad hoc researchesnamely that this was a question that aroused a lot of passion in people. What time of day was it? 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: It is possible that cougars of unknown origin may be breeding to a limited extent in Vermont. 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). The truth is, I was by this point dubious. When a cats around, its not hard to find evidence. He soon developed a five-question litmus test: How far away were you? Also moose. 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. They are most definitely here. Camel's Hump (alternatively Camels Hump) is a mountain in the Green Mountains in the U.S. state of Vermont.The north slope of the mountain borders the Winooski River, which has carved through the Green Mountains over eons.At 4,083 ft (1,244 m), it is tied (with Mount Ellen) for the third-highest mountain in Vermont.Surrounded by 10 acres (4 ha) of alpine tundra, the mountain is the most . I saw on three occasions in about the same location a beautiful mtn lion with the long bushytail that curves at the end. Until 2011, that question rested upon a hypothetical. But, I think with education and planning, we should reintroduce wolves and cougar in the Northeast. 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. Wildlife is unpredictable (and several people go missing in wild areas, parks especially, every year -Probably not because of alien abduction). Betty had driven up from his home in Rhode Island. 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. No need since so we guess it has moved on from the northeast corner of Connecticut. I was tracking some deer tracks and I came to a promising deer run with a lot of deer scat on the ground when I noticed a cat track amongst the sign. It was definitely a cougar. She said it jumped up on the neighbors stone wall which was pretty high and walked across it. I had seen bear, deer, coyotes, foxes, that one bobcat all the usual suspects. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This setting should only be used on your home or work computer. But no. 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. 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! He worked, in Wyoming and Arizona, with other professionals, some with government agencies, like the one he works for, and others who were hunters and trappers, often employed by ranchers who had lost stock to mountain lions. Periods of snow. 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 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. In Vermont, in the late 19th century, this meant, especially, sheep. Catamounts are large wild cats that are also called panthers, cougars or mountain lions. Not a bobcat or a coyote or a fisher or anything else that might be mistaken for a mountain lion. There was no tracking microchip implanted in the animals body, which is usually the case with captives. They are much larger than bobcat and lynx, young adults can still have spots too. 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. 2,110 likes. Green Mountain Lion Corp #256 34 Blair Park Road Ste. I could hear the steady rush of traffic on Route 315. Ive never forgotten that and told it to many folks over the years, most of whom, I must say, thought I was hallucinating I guess but, it/he/she was a fact in Longmeadow, MA that summer long ago. She IS, perhaps, the most knowledgeable and experienced person in this arena and I listened intently to her presentation (Richmond, VT 2018). The mountain lionalso known as the cougar, puma, panther, or catamountis a large cat species native to the Americas. Im not surprised that various state officers deny the presence of cougars in new England. There was the vaguest of trails, crisscrossed by deadfalls and a sharp-thorned bush that soon drew blood from Ottmanns right hand. It kills to eat but does not necessarily practice any sort of conservation ethic. The last time a mountain lion was captured in New York was in the . When that last catamount was killed by a deer hunter, the state was paying a $20 bounty for pelts or carcasses. It was a bright sunny summer day. The Vermont woods would be a lot more interesting with mountain lions in them. near Greenfield with an experienced guide that hed worked with several times. Id splurged on them. I have no choice but to take this seriously, he told me. Still, I wanted to believe those sightings were real. 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