But this requires a breeding pair. Ordinary, the lone males do not range much more than 100 miles. Its closest living relative is the cheetah. [Betty] and the other guys dont do this shit. But that was OK. Bo Ottmann knew they were out there. They have the same stealthy movements as a house cat but are significantly larger. We have a lot of them here in N CA. He set down his cigarette and looked me in the eye. Betty, for instance, has presented on Eastern cougars more than 300 times, gathering many hundreds of sighting reports in the process. Id splurged on them. Indeed! 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. One wonders just how tolerant Vermonters would be of a healthy population of mountain lions after one attacked a child waiting for the school bus. 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 . Long Trail Mountain Lion roster: Myra Aldanondo, Olivia Cole-Bugay, Liz Daara, Rose Johnson, Aubrey Lanning, Molly Luikart, Camilla Marcy, Meara Morgan, Harlow Quail, . Id need proof if I wanted people to believe me. Stupid me grabbed my camera and a stick as to protect myself ( yes stupid idea as I could stop this thing from attacking me lol. Low 24F. I had a pair of good binoculars in my coat pocket. Its distinctive featurethe one that sets it apart from other North American wild catsis its tail, which is thick and often as long as its body. Kim Royar, a biologist at the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, told me she receives 40 to 50 reports annually, and although she believes that few, if any, are actual cougar sightings, she doesnt dismiss the possibility that someday someone will happen upon the real deal. But other hard evidence of the big cats presence is elusive. But no. 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. We witnessed a mountain lion stalking a herd of deer. We hadnt seen a cougar, nor any evidence to suggest a cougar had traveled these woods recently. Others have seen cougar in neighboring towns . In Vermont, it was 1881. I now live in Boulder, CO where we have regular sightings.same animal as 35 yrs agohands down, Warren ,Ma early morning having my coffee on my front steps and noticed about 50 feet across the Road something coming out of the trail as it did it looked out at the road and turned around as it did I could see that it was a mountain lion ! 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). 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. Still, there are those of us who know what weve seen. My mother always said she saw one across the street from our house one night in the late 50s early 60s. I think of Aldo Leopolds Thinking Like a Mountain essay about how deer decimated the forests and died of starvation because of humans incessant desire to kill. Running into a mountain lion can be a scary experience. The name " Camel's Rump " was assigned on a historical map made by Ira Allen in 1798. I must have looked doubtfulwe were within spitting distance of a heavily trafficked road and only 12 miles from downtown Hartfordbut both Ottmann and Betty told me that cougars actually prefer more populated areas, since thats where deer tend to congregate. Jason. Reported mountain lion sightings are popping up all over Vermont and convinced onlookers say the proof is in the pictures. I will never forget what I saw! Now that USFW has declared them extinct, why not formally reintroduce them. Mountain lions are large, tan cats. There are so many great sites out there devoted to. Interesting article, but it is really incomplete without a discussion of the legal implications of having a confirmed endangered species such as the Eastern Cougar in New England. They set the stage for the exotics to move in, and this has a huge impact on our ecology, he said. They were inevitably fleeting. Still, sightings are common. We need [an apex] predator back on the land, Sue Morse told me. The Christian school also dropped out of the state . Watching a potential winter storm. Apex predators like the cougar and wolf make for a healthier ecosystem. Yet dozens of. 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. Green Mountain Lion Corp #256 34 Blair Park Road Ste. 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. Obviously, this is the reason why the experts are loathe to admit that the species is here. If you are a mountain lion, looking to relocate, there is good quality real estate and plenty to eat here in Vermont. In the few seconds that this took, I had convinced myself that I was looking at a mountain lion. 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. 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 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. As I walked thru the beginning of the trail I spooked a deer and heard this awful screech and slowly backed out of there .. 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. How big was the animal? 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. This isnt to say she believes none of these animals has stepped foot on New England soil over the past century. Our hunter friend was hunting in central NH when they came upon an adult deer carcass way up in a tree. There are no breeding cougars in New England and we do not need any. The last time a mountain lion was captured in New York was in the . 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. 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. These settlers established measures for predator control by any means possible. I knew it was a cat track because the tracks were in a straight line and no signs of claws like you would see with a coyote track. Since then, there have been a handful of confirmed mountain lion sightings in the Northeast, although most have been thought to be escaped captive animals. 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 live in Vermont and have seen, in broad daylight, a mountain lion (catamount, cougar, puma). Scat, tracks, lays, scratch mounds youll see these things.. And some people might decide to release them into the wild rather than keeping them in their possession. My husband and where riding our Motorcycle down Rte 110 near Milan NH 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. He wore red suspenders and a baseball cap. He didn't want to dispute what people are saying they saw, he simply says they need proof to substantiate it. Bearded, bowler hat, expression impenetrable behind facial hair and the stoicism of an earlier era. Before I departed the Old Well Tavern, Bo Ottmann offered to lead me on a walk into an adjacent stretch of woods, where, he assured me, cougars might be found. So long as the tails there, that is. So, traffic had been slowed from both ends for a good 3-5 minutes. We also had bobcats that we saw quite often but I am positive that these were mountain lions! I think I may have pissed her off since I was up in that area X2 this week. Yet I also remembered something Sue Morse had told me months before, as we sat in her living room drinking beer and chatting cats. Dismissing most of the sightings as probable bobcats, Morse asserted that the scientific evidence has not been proven. "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. ), or someones coworkers mother had seen one from the back porch of a summer camp back in 07 or maybe 08, and shed tried to get a picture but this was before she got her first iPhone, and by the time shed retrieved her camera from the living room, the cat was long gone. But my eyes picked up something and I knew, right away, that it was alive. 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