Mountain Lions Still Prowl New England Forests Despite Report (Via Chad Arment)

Mountain Lions Still Prowl New England Forests Despite Report

Brad Sylvester – Thu Mar 3, 7:12 pm ET

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has declared the eastern cougar to be extinct. Furthermore, it says there are no breeding populations of any cougar, puma, catamount, mountain lion or panther in the eastern United States except for the endangered Florida panther. Despite this official statement, I can say, unequivocally, that there are still mountain lions in New England.

While the big cats here may represent species other than the eastern cougar, and may be too widely scattered to make an effective breeding population, they are here. I know, because the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department (NHF&G) responded to a call from a resident who reported a mountain lion about fifteen miles away from my house in September of 2009. Upon arrival at the scene in Barnstead, New Hampshire, an agent of the NHF&G also saw the animal.

Although NHF&G stated that they believe the animal may have been an escaped (and illegally kept) pet, it is still a mountain lion. Furthermore, I have personally seen photographs taken in the last couple of weeks in Sharon, Conn., of what is, without doubt, an adult mountain lion walking through someone's backyard and peering through the windows from the back porch.

A third confirmed mountain lion was identified through DNA testing of scat found in the Ossippee Mountains of New Hampshire in 2002, says Margaret Gillespie, a Naturalist at the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center.

With males weighing in the neighborhood of 150 pounds and able to leap as much as 30 feet in a single bound, a lone mountain lion is easily capable of hunting and killing deer which are plentiful in the forests of New England, as is a variety of smaller game animals and birds.

With so few sightings confirmed in New England, although there are generally several unsubstantiated reports of cougars each year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's claim that there are no breeding populations here is certainly credible. It also says that those confirmed sightings up and down the east coast in recent years have always turned out to be vagrant specimens of western cougars in those cases where a positive identification was possible.

Given the thorough review conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, I believe that it is certainly correct in its assessment of the plight of the eastern cougar as species. Despite that, however, there are mountain lions still prowling the forests of New England, although their numbers are exceeding small.

Brad Sylvester is a life-long resident of New England who has lived in four of the six New England states after spending his first 21 years in Vermont. He is a freelance writer whose articles about New England are frequently published at Yahoo!.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20110304/tr_ac/7987914_mountain_lions_still_prowl_new_england_forests_despite_report