mountain lion vermont

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. Clearly, Puma concolor once inhabited the forests of the Northeast, although its difficult to say in what numbers. In Vermont, for instance, a few dozen wild turkeys from Pennsylvania were released in 1969 and multiplied into the thousands we have here now. Height. This isnt to say she believes none of these animals has stepped foot on New England soil over the past century. These things happen suddenly and they are over quickly. No An official form of the United States government. The discussion of whether federal lands should be a place to subsidize cattle ranching is another question. In Vermont, in the late 19th century, this meant, especially, sheep. Now that USFW has declared them extinct, why not formally reintroduce them. You need to understand that every biologist that works for the state has a duty to deny mountain lions. Videos - Industry Stories; Find Candidates; The last catamount in Vermont is finally, officially, certainly dead. When he suggested we retrace our route, past lion, to see a sow bear with cubs, we headed in the opposite direction. They denied it until a cougar was hit as it tried to cross the very busy Merritt Parkway. So Blodgett brought what he had learned in Wyoming and Arizona back to Vermont with him and began following up on catamount sightings. Two mountain lion encounters in his driveway. Ive heard some biologists say it is not a distinct subspecies. 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. It fled when I resumed my walk down the logging road and on to my truck. By the late 20th century, the range of the catamount was confined to several western states and a small remnant population along the Gulf Coast that was eventually squeezed down into the Everglades/Big Cypress area of Florida and reduced to a couple of dozen animals of poor genetic quality due to inbreeding. It had traveled, certainly, though Minnesota and Wisconsin and, who knows, perhaps even Vermont and might, then, have accounted for some of those sightings. 2,110 likes. Out & About | Best New England Holiday Events for 2019. This guy was very intelligent, he had abandoned a professional career to pursue his dream of guiding. Everglades Panther 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 animal that was killed in Connecticut proved that. Its not a bear, not a dog, not a deer, not a bobcat. These sightings usually took place at night or in fading light, like that of my bobcat encounter. But the landowners were excited enough by the possibility that, persuaded by Blodgett, they bought a trail camera and set it up on the site. Still, I wanted to believe those sightings were real. People clearly arent lying when they say they saw a cougar; [the sighting] has a profound effect on them.. An expert said it was probably a basking shark. 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. 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. The first European settlers arrived in the Texas Hill country in the early 1800s and viewed mountain lions as a dangerous threat to their own survival as well as a predator threat to their livestock. Could be a deer, but it didnt seem to be tall enough. Black markings decorate the tip of the tail, ears, and around the snout. 8 Arlington (9-10) and No. Betty, for instance, has presented on Eastern cougars more than 300 times, gathering many hundreds of sighting reports in the process. It is also known as cougar, panther, mountain lion, and puma, though catamount is the preferred regional vernacular. Lizzie Post Would Like Your Attention. So you can imagine there. 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. 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. Especially among those who did believe. Nowhere in New England is the matter definitively settled. Wildlife biologists, as professional scientists, require a higher level of documentation and proof. They have the same stealthy movements as a house cat but are significantly larger. I started this blog for people to discuss mountain lion sightings and reports in the Green Mountain State of Vermont. Just like we dont need any slimy humans on earth period. When I shared their story with the staff at the center where my sister lived, I expected surprise and interested. People said that the catamountas the animal is called in Vermontwas still around and you heard stories about someone who would swear to having seen one. 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. A wildlife camera snapped the image in late 2019 and the refuge shared it on Facebook this month, challenging followers to find the hidden mountain lion. Several years of doing the follow-ups, then, convinced Blodgett that there were no catamounts in Vermont. My husband and where riding our Motorcycle down Rte 110 near Milan NH 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. It was a bright sunny summer day. Whatever it was, it was standing motionless and, I thought, looking back at me as intently as I was staring at it. Vermont offers plenty of habitat in which mountain lions could thrive. For who but we humans can look across the landscape and not acknowledge our role in the diminishment of cougars and the myriad ways in which we have knocked the landscape out of balance? So, traffic had been slowed from both ends for a good 3-5 minutes. It can run 50 miles an hour and clear a twelve-foot fence. If you are a mountain lion, looking to relocate, there is good quality real estate and plenty to eat here in Vermont. If he was not determined to prove that someone had actually seen a mountain lion in Vermonthe is a scientist, after allhe was still excited by the possibility. We need cougars and we need wolves back in the Northeast, because a landscape of fear is a well-balanced landscape.. It was definitely a cougar. If you dont think cougars are coming to the East, think again, she said, leaning forward for emphasis. Green Mountain Lion Corporation, Inc. Business Consulting and Services Williston, Vermont 5,563 followers Boutique management recruiting firm focusing on heavy equipment manufacturing & distribution. Inslerman said the DEC received about a half-dozen calls reporting sightings of mountain lions last year; two calls this week. I just heard from a fellow college student of a siting in Greenfield last fall and two in Colrain this spring. 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. For several years, Blodgett, a wildlife biologist with the Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife, conducted those follow up investigations. She lives near the end of a gravel road in a modest, low-slung house tucked into the flanks of the Green Mountains. One one occasion she had two little ones with her so their den must have been sort of closeby. 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. Humans and wildlife MUST learn to live along side each other and we MUST learn to respect nature. At the head of the driveway is a flower sales table in front of a modest size greenhouse. The tails gotta be there. The old logging road was easy enough to navigate and I let my feet follow it while I kept my eyes up and scanning. Probably because of all the hunters that would be out trying to get their trophy and endangering others. 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. There was one possibility that might account for some of these sightings, he says. In this case, there was the carcass of a deer, recently killed in the area where a couple had reported seeing what looked like a mountain lion on land they owned. Regarding a breeding population that is the unknown. It kills to eat but does not necessarily practice any sort of conservation ethic. I live in Vermont and have seen, in broad daylight, a mountain lion (catamount, cougar, puma). And consider, for a moment, the concern and outright fear an official acknowledgment of such a carnivorous and predatory creature might evoke. my husband tapped my leg and asked what is that crossing the road It was a Cougar tan in color long tail which had a slight curl upward .I wish I had my camera to prove it but I know We saw it. 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. He coined the term landscape of fear to describe the relationship between predator and prey in the wild. 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. I go out into the woods on the opening day of deer season every year and a lot of other Vermonters are out there with me. 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 ! Maybe you've seen the UVM(University of Vermont) catamount at a basketball game, or the catamount at the Vermont History Museum. Phone: . 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). The combined scoring differential in those matchups was 158-77. Low 24F. The cougar and the states refusal to admit it was here made the local paper. He set down his cigarette and looked me in the eye. Threat of Being Attacked 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. Part of this belief is rooted in his journalistic experience, which across the decades has cultivated his nose for sincerity. Wildlife is unpredictable (and several people go missing in wild areas, parks especially, every year -Probably not because of alien abduction). It was a striking animal, certainly, but it was no mountain lion. Running into a mountain lion can be a scary experience. Tried to see "mountain lion" and agree that what appears to be a long tail is most likely the . In Vermont, it was 1881. I live in Hopkinton, NH and saw one coming up from the Contoocook River one misty morning. 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. Somebody in the NC Legislature believes, because lions are now protected by law. Video - Trade Show Recaps; Videos - Can We Find a Time to Talk? Interesting how tree stumps or boulders assume the shape of an animal in this kind of light. And, if those people who said they were seeing catamounts were wrong, and not just making it up, then what were they seeing? vital part of this countries ecosystem. Long Trail Mountain Lion roster: Myra Aldanondo, Olivia Cole-Bugay, Liz Daara, Rose Johnson, Aubrey Lanning, Molly Luikart, Camilla Marcy, Meara Morgan, Harlow Quail, . It may not surprise you to learn that I was quite intrigued by this third group. At least once a year thered be a story from somewhere, but I only ran the absolute best, he told me. Coyotes, for instance, found their way into Vermont with no help. Winds ESE at 10 to 20 mph. We really must establish first that these beautiful animals SHOULD be in every state that was once THEIR habitat. Feb 28, 2023 4:00 am By Robert Spencer 1 Comment. 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. 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. This could, of course, be projection on my part. But my eyes picked up something and I knew, right away, that it was alive. 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. Theyre here. Our hunter friend was hunting in central NH when they came upon an adult deer carcass way up in a tree. 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.

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