I just returned from a glorious week in Maine in time to see another cougar sighting reported in the local paper. Though mountain lions are listed as extinct in Massachusetts and all of the other Northeast states, this sports writer makes a habit of collecting and regularly publishing accounts like this one in his weekly outdoors column. The state's biodiversity is on the rise, with all manner of previously extirpated critters reentering its borders, from moose to bears and fishers, so it makes sense that they're here. But don't tell a state biologist that. Though the grassroots group Eastern Cougar Network has recorded 11 confirmed sightings in the east in recent years, state agencies steadfastly refuse to admit they're here.
Some say that's because they don't want to begin paying attention to a new animal, others because they want to be certain they're really here before alarming the public.
Many of the reports are faulty, with the cougars proven to be anything from bobcats to dogs who like to chase deer. But when it's hunters and other outdoor enthusiasts swearing that they're seeing huge cats with long, looping tails, well, I find it hard to believe that they're ALL wrong.
Can they all be escaped pets, as the agencies claim? And even if they are, is that a reason to ignore their presence?
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JMG Posted 8:17 am
22 Aug 2007
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amc89 Posted 1:04 am
23 Aug 2007
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Erik Hoffner Posted 2:20 am
23 Aug 2007
Cougars as pets: yes: also odd. It's legal in Florida so far as I know, and breeders supply the cats. Not sure about other states.
I've read that people have started using pet cougars to guard their secret backwoods drug labs, too, in preference to the old standby, the pit bull.
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Penelopeme Posted 10:05 pm
24 Aug 2007
Eventually there will be more and more and something will give to prove it, road kill or something. Then those of us who have seen can feel less "crazy" and be fortunate to have to seen them and be able to tell our stories. I don't feel the need to have a wildlife degree to tell the difference between a coyote and a cougar.
Western Maine
PenelopeME
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Erik Hoffner Posted 12:29 am
26 Aug 2007
Erik
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caniscandida Posted 3:42 pm
26 Aug 2007
A number of years ago, when I was living in Santa Fe, I had an opportunity to observe a Common or Northern Flicker, Colaptes auratus, at fairly close range, in good light, for about a half hour, as it worked on a tree outside my window. From its coloring, it was unmistakably the "yellow-shafted" form; but in that part of the country, one ought to expect to see mostly the "red-shafted" form. There are occasional interlopers from either side in the Plains states, apparently, so while it was not earth-shaking that a yellow-shafted should show up in the Rockies, it was still mighty interesting. So I told all this to a worker at the excellent Randall Davey Audubon Center, someone whom I liked and admired; and she just smiled, and said I must have got it wrong.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof," said the late Carl Sagan. But he was talking about such claims as alien abduction and Sasquatch. Claims to have seen mountain lions in the northeastern states certainly require proof, but there is nothing all that extraordinary in it.
This is why the grassroots group that is monitoring sightings of mountain lions is doing very good work indeed. Certainly birders do not go to state biologists to confirm what they saw, they are way beyond that. Similarly other amateur observers of wildlife ought to be able to register an unusual and interesting sighting with a sympathetic bulletin board.
The sightings in southern West Virginia and Delaware are thrilling, as well as in northern and central Florida. These cats have the largest range of any mammal in the Americas, and probably have the largest range of any cat anywhere, from southern Alaska and the Yukon to Tierra del Fuego. Clearly they are adaptable, and find ways to move around.
Penelope of course does well to take precautions. A couple of years ago, at Moosehead Lake, I asked a resident if anyone was concerned about wolves moving into Maine from Quebec. She said No, not that she was aware of, though they had heard about the possibility. But mountain lions come into violent conflict with people and their pets much more easily than wolves.
One recommendation to the Eastern Cougar Network: though they are making available data from Canada, it would be helpful to add more of Canada to their maps. Probably the US northeastern mountain lions came down from Quebec (though not impossibly the one in WV came up the Ohio valley, seeing how many sightings around the Mississippi there are), and I for one would like a better sense of the cats' distribution in Canada.
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