mountain lion vermont

Phone: +1 802 448 8250. Hes also unafraid to take unpopular positions when he deems it necessary: Shortly before our meeting, hed signed a petition in favor of keeping ATVs off public roads. I saw on three occasions in about the same location a beautiful mtn lion with the long bushytail that curves at the end. Something I had not expected ever to experience. Feb 28, 2023 4:00 am By Robert Spencer 1 Comment. This assessment is echoed by the aforementioned Christopher Spatz, who has been studying cougars for better than 20 years. Yet I also remembered something Sue Morse had told me months before, as we sat in her living room drinking beer and chatting cats. 9 Grace Christian (9-11). There are so many great sites out there devoted to. Betty was quiet, and I wondered if even he, a man who does not doubt the presence of these cats in our midst and who himself claims multiple sightings, thought Ottmann was exaggerating. Maybe, I thought, but the shape seemed wrong. 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. 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. I do this shit.. 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. 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. Beautiful creature. 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). Because they are.. Provided by Touchpoints Winds ESE at 10 to 20 mph. I have no choice but to take this seriously, he told me. Ottmann nodded. Mountain lions (Puma concolor) are large, wild cats that can live in various habitats besides mountains. We clearly have migratory male cougars coming through. The first time was in the yard which was surrounded by woods. 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. In March of 1965, the Colorado legislature repealed the old mountain lion bounty of $50, which was first enacted in 1924. Recall a few years back, a guy in a kayak off Horseneck Beach in Westport, MA, was tracked by a large fin. 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. Still, there are those of us who know what weve seen. 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. 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. And, now, here I was. He/she was UNMISTAKEABLY a mountain lion: stretched out straight, long tail straight out behind him, golden/beigey color, and smallish head, little ears. It does NOT surprise me, you would have seen a wild, free-roaming, native 'eastern' cougar, aka puma, mountain lion in Vermont. But I learned something else in my ad hoc researchesnamely that this was a question that aroused a lot of passion in people. 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.. It jumped 28 feet across the road. By now, I knew the answer to that one. She said it jumped up on the neighbors stone wall which was pretty high and walked across it. Snow accumulating 3 to 5 inches.. . Apex predators like the cougar and wolf make for a healthier ecosystem. I just heard from a fellow college student of a siting in Greenfield last fall and two in Colrain this spring. Can they really all be cases of false identification? And it was this curiosity that led me to the Old Well Tavern in Simsbury, Connecticut, at a time of day (11:30 a.m.) that does not normally find me ensconced in the dim confines of a drinking establishment. I also know of someone who said they showed F&G a photo of one from a game camera in NH. I wasnt planning to shoot her unless she moved in my direction. We witnessed a mountain lion stalking a herd of deer. 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. Green Mountain Lion Corp. Home; Apply Now! But some sightings were more promising and some seemed exceedingly so. Lacked, almost any tail at all, for that matter. Still, sightings are common. The animal, I learned, is called many things: mountain lion, panther, catamount, puma, cougar and more. She lives near the end of a gravel road in a modest, low-slung house tucked into the flanks of the Green Mountains. Concerned for people / pets and a school just down the street, stopped to report the sighting where dispatch told me that if I did not have proof they would not respond. There was, in California last year, a case of a mountain lion seriously injuring a six-year old who was walking a trail in Silicon Valley country. Its not a bear, not a dog, not a deer, not a bobcat. But right now youre dealing with top-notch guys. Fish and Wildlife Service unofficially declared the Eastern cougar extinct. They knew what they were doing, Blodgett says. Now that USFW has declared them extinct, why not formally reintroduce them. Check out 4 Seconds Until Impact by Bruce Hemming, or Cat Urbigkits books about predator attacks in unlikely places . 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. 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. [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. Some with cameras. Mountain lions are around 4 feet long with a two-and-a-half foot tail and can stand 24-30 inches tall at the shoulder. The expert opinion held up until a man was killed by a Great White not too far away. He was a dark butterscotch color, very tall and lanky (taller and thinner than a really big German Shepard) and that tail. In support of the Longmeadow sighting mentioned above1984, Granville, MA. 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). I was outdoor with my two pugs and quickly scooped them up and brought them in the house. At Green Mountain Lion Corp, we specialize in placing professionals in a variety of industries. They especially come down from the mountains when there is a big water shortgage. Wildlife is unpredictable (and several people go missing in wild areas, parks especially, every year -Probably not because of alien abduction). 104 Williston, VT 05495. 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. People like you are the problem and cause of extinctions. We also had bobcats that we saw quite often but I am positive that these were mountain lions! 2,110 likes. They are here & ..just a matter of time with photo or kill on a highway/road. Blodgett and I were returning from a day spent looking forand finding timber rattlesnakes, a species that is endangered in Vermont. The deer dont eat the exotics, but they eat the competitors. Americans called the mountain " Tah-wak-be-dee-ee-wads. 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. For instance, a favorite food for deer is the seedlings of forest tree species. All those deer hunters represent a kind of ad hoc search party. The animal that was killed in Connecticut proved that. She said it was long and thick. This isnt to say she believes none of these animals has stepped foot on New England soil over the past century. Also known as cougars, panthers or pumas, mountain lions range in color from tan to grey, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service. So, traffic had been slowed from both ends for a good 3-5 minutes. 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. So it is possible that, on occasion, someone would catch a glimpse of one of these animals. 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 . It looked real promising, Blodgett remembers. Even in the controlled environment of a lab, the truth about Eastern cougars seems to be almost willfully eluding its seekers. As cleared lands became reforested, many species that had been squeezed into small regions where there was still habitat,or hunted to near extinction, could be replanted in their former range. 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. Low 24F. 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. Was INCREDIBLE! But, I think with education and planning, we should reintroduce wolves and cougar in the Northeast. 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). Within six weeks, he continued, I was getting off the plane in Jackson Hole for a national mountain lion conference. 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. Dont forget, south Texas also used to home to two other species of cats ocelots and jaguarundis. I lived in great Barrington mass and I took photos of tracks in a field in April of 2009 (and of course lost them). I thought about why this might be and the best I could come up with for an answer is that we feel a kind of nostalgia for the wild. My neighbors have seen several over the last 15-20 years. In recent years, it has been expanding its range elsewhere; moving into mid-western states like Illinois and Missouri from its established range in the Rocky Mountain states and the Dakotas. 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. 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. Spring Loaded to See Something 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. 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. Honestly, leaving this out of your article would seem to perpetuate the notion that there is a conspiracy to keep us all in ignorance. Just like we dont need any slimy humans on earth period. 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. He continued, I think with education and planning, we specialize in placing professionals in a modest low-slung. Hoc researchesnamely that this was a question that aroused a lot of passion in.. Can live in various habitats besides mountains two in Colrain this spring they were,! 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