Finally, in the third camp, there are the true believers—the “cougar truthers,” if you will—the 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. The light was failing and I was on my way out of the woods. It was a striking animal, certainly, but it was no mountain lion. Some might mistake the bobcat, which still lives in New England, for a cougar—even though its tail is about 6 inches long and the bigger cat’s is 3 feet or more. That’s a reasonable assertion. 9/23/2020 8:08 AM PT Play video content. I’m not surprised that various state officers deny the presence of cougars in new England. Nostalgia for the Wild But it is also true that there is something different and especially chilling about the threat of being attacked by something that is alive and wants to devour you. 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. Ottmann and I walked farther. However, when I asked the room of 200 or so people how many believe they had seen a mountain lion/cougar/puma/catamount, hands shot up all around the room – about 25% of those present. I had been the first vehicle in a line held up by one lane traffic on a bridge reconstruction. When that last catamount was killed by a deer hunter, the state was paying a $20 bounty for pelts or carcasses. He coined the term “landscape of fear” to describe the relationship between predator and prey in the wild. When I shared their story with the staff at the center where my sister lived, I expected surprise and interested. Ottmann grew up and still lives just minutes from the tavern; his familiarity with the establishment was obvious (after we met in the parking lot, he led me into the building through the kitchen, greeting each of the staff by name). Still, there is no saying that it will not happen. Among the mountain lion’s typical behaviors is the way it will revisit, for several days, the carcass of an animal it has killed, moving it and cacheing it until there is nothing left to eat or the flesh has turned. This was as clear as day had a long tail and long body I was thinking someone’s pet was on the loose or escaped form a zoo !! But I don’t think it will happen any time soon.”. Neither resemble a cougar! It is hard for me to believe that the big cats haven’t found plenty of space to roam without regular detection. I had been foraging up in an area that is rocky. That it had, somehow, made a return and established residence. He soon developed a five-question litmus test: How far away were you? Of course no dash cam or accessible phone camera at the time! I appreciated Ottmann and Betty’s confidence and commitment, but here I was, poking through thorny thickets behind a bar, trailing a bleeding man whose devotion to proving the presence of cougars was beginning to seem like a quixotic quest with no end. People said that the catamount—as the animal is called in Vermont—was still around and you heard stories about someone who would swear to having seen one. I lived in Woodstock, CT in 2005/2006. I just heard from a fellow college student of a siting in Greenfield last fall and two in Colrain this spring. If there was an animal out there, killing stock, he would find it.”, This man, and others, taught Blodgett how to look for sign and, he says, “You learn pretty quickly that if there is an animal in the area, it will leave sign. “Fear is actually one of the most powerful ecological forces we know, and it’s 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. To date, Keeping Track has helped conserve 40,000 acres in 12 states and in Quebec. Please Wear A Mask. There was one photographed on a porch in Greenwich, CT, looking in the patio window that made national news a decade ago. Instead, the responsne I heard were nonchalant, “Oh, yes, lots of people have seen that mountain lion around here; pretty isn’t it?”. I could hear the steady rush of traffic on Route 315. 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. I heard from Neighbors that they have been sighting from the mass pike which runs along this area but also very close to Quabbin! The scientific name for the catamount is Puma concolor. My daughter said to me “that’s the biggest cat I’ve ever seen”. Or, if it does, when that will be. Not a bobcat or a coyote or a fisher or anything else that might be mistaken for a mountain lion. 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. 8:30 AM - Registration. 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. Clearly, Puma concolor once inhabited the forests of the Northeast, although it’s difficult to say in what numbers. We also had bobcats that we saw quite often but I am positive that these were mountain lions! And, if those people who said they were seeing catamounts were wrong, and not just making it up, then what were they seeing? Obviously, this is the reason why the “experts” are loathe to admit that the species is here. Its mounted carcass is on display in Montpelier where I’d seen it when I was the adult supervision for my daughter’s sixth-grade class trip to the capital. If the mountain lion is a certified killer of sheep and, sometimes, cattle, it has also occasionally attacked humans. 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.