Claims of Mountain Lions Roaming in Connecticut Drew Groans ... Until Saturday

Claims of Mountain Lions Roaming in Connecticut Drew Groans ... Until Saturday

MOSI SECRET
June 12, 2011

In the not-so-wilds of Connecticut, the sightings have come with some regularity for years: Immense, muscled cats, with tails nearly as long as their torsos, emerging out of the forest, appearing first as a flash in the corner of the eye, and then suddenly, shockingly, in front of a motorist's car.

And for years, the responses to those who said they saw a mountain lion were as if they had said they had seen Bigfoot ripping through the Appalachians: You must have been mistaken. A wild eastern cougar? Never. Those are extinct.

Last week was no different, as various reports began trickling in of a mountain lion roaming around, in of all places, Greenwich, Conn.

There was a sighting near the Brunswick School on June 5. In another incident, a paramedic and an emergency medical technician were driving in an ambulance when they said a large cat jumped in front of them. A homeowner made a report around the same time.

A town conservation officer said the sightings were unlikely. But then someone came forward with a photograph. And early Saturday came indisputable evidence: flesh and bone.

Someone driving a Hyundai S.U.V. struck an animal on the Wilbur Cross Parkway in Milford, about 45 miles east of Greenwich. The authorities were called, and the animal was confirmed dead. More to the point, it was also confirmed to be a mountain lion.

Officials took the mountain lion, a 140-pound male, to a state Department of Environmental Protection office; officials said they believed that the dead animal was the same one that had been seen around Greenwich.

The discovery and confirmation of the mountain lion's existence was an undeniable told-you-so moment for all those whose accounts of encountering a mountain lion were ever questioned, laughed at or worse.

Jeremy Joyell, 68, of Bristol, Conn., said he saw one in 2004. "I was driving up Route 63 in the evening," he recalled.

"It was August, so the sun was an hour away from setting in the west. I saw this animal come bounding down about 200 yards away. For once in my life I was driving at the speed limit. I saw it and it stopped.

"He ran right in front of the car. And I saw him. He was about eight feet long. Four feet of body and four feet of tail."

Mr. Joyell said that even though his sighting was never officially verified, the news that an actual mountain lion was found left him feeling vindicated.

"When I saw that today I felt better because those of us that have seen them know damn well what we saw," he said.

Patricia Sheeran, of Bloomfield, Conn., said she also saw a mountain lion about a quarter-mile from her home in 2007. "I was driving very slowly. And something caught my eye, and it was a mountain lion. It stopped, and I stopped. It had the standard black tip to its tail. It was big. And it walked off, and it walked back into the woods."

Earlier this year, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service released a report that said the eastern cougar was extinct. Other varieties of cougars, which are called mountain lions in some areas, can be found in Manitoba, Canada, North and South Dakota, Eastern Texas, Florida and possibly Oklahoma..

"We recognize that many people have seen cougars in the wild within the historical range of the eastern cougar," said Martin Miller, the service's Northeast region chief of endangered species. "However, we believe those cougars are not the eastern cougar subspecies. We found no information to support the existence of the eastern cougar."

During the review, the federal agency reviewed 108 confirmed accounts of cougar sightings from 1900 to 2010 and concluded that all the cougars were not native to the Northeast. They were different species mostly from South America or the West Coast.

The agency says there are thousands of unconfirmed reports of cougar sightings in the Eastern United States.

Officials suggested the lion killed in Milford may have been released or escaped from captivity.

"We still believe there is no native population," said Dennis Schain, a spokesman for the state's Department of Environmental Protection.

"We've never been presented with any credible evidence of a native population," he added. "There is a school of thought out there that we are knowingly denying it, but there is no reason the Department of Environmental Protection would do that."

Mr. Schain said the state was conducting tests to determine definitively that the dead cat was the same one that was spotted in Greenwich. They can compare paw prints and samples of the cat's droppings.

They were also fielding calls of new sightings: On Sunday, the Greenwich Police Department announced that a homeowner and his family saw "a large tan cat" in their backyard Sunday morning. "The cat was described by the family as a mountain lion," a statement said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/13/nyregion/mountain-lion-is-found-in-connecticut.html?_r=1