Posted on 03/17/2007 8:19:53 AM PDT by aculeus
Do wild mountain lions live here?
It's one of Maine's most enduring natural mysteries, and federal biologists are digging into decades of witness reports and scientific research that could help solve it. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is formally reviewing the status of the eastern mountain lion to determine if it should stay on the endangered species list. Officially, the large cat with a long tail is believed to be extinct east of the Mississippi River, from Maine to South Carolina. Yet biologists receive at least a dozen reports each year of sightings in southern Maine alone, and rumors abound in other states as well.
"We're willing to listen to the evidence and look at it objectively," said Mark McCollough, a federal biologist based in Old Town who is coordinating the review. Mountain lions, also called cougars or panthers, were eradicated in the eastern United States in the 1800s. Early settlers shot them, nearly wiped out their natural prey (elk, bison and deer) and turned much of their forest habitat into farmland.
They mostly disappeared by 1900. A mountain lion killed on the Maine-Quebec border in 1938 is officially considered the last indisputable proof of the cat's presence here.
Reports of cougar sightings have remained steady over the years. Scott Lindsay, a regional biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife, said he gets 12 or more reports a year of cougars seen from Bethel to Kittery. He suspects many more people believe they've seen a cougar and don't report it to experts who could check it out.
On Monday, coincidentally, Lindsay was checking into a report of a recent cougar sighting in Acton. He had not yet been able to contact the person who saw it or to look for evidence, he said.
Lindsay said he and other biologists take the reports seriously and check out reliable ones by looking for tracks, scat or tufts of hair. They even set up cameras after getting multiple reports in the Hampden area about 10 years ago.
Most of the sightings turn out to be smaller cats, such as lynx, bobcats or even house cats, or other animals, such as fishers.
"The vast majority of these, for sure, are simply mistakes," Lindsay said. "I'm very skeptical that we could have any wild population here."
That is not to say all of the sightings are mistakes. A couple of Maine sightings -- one in Cape Elizabeth and one in Monmouth -- are considered the state's most credible cougar encounters.
Rosemary Townsend is as sure about what she saw today as she was on that March day in 1995. She saw the cat while walking down a gravel road in a large wooded area near Ram Island Farm in Cape Elizabeth.
"I thought it was a dog originally. Then when I looked at the face I thought, 'Oh my gosh, that's a mountain lion,'Ý" she said Monday.
The cat was drinking water out of a small pond about 25 yards from her. It lifted its head and looked right at her, Townsend said. She saw its long "bottle-brush tail," a feature that distinguishes lions from lynx or bobcats. Townsend slowly turned around and walked back up the road. "I lost sight of him as I walked away from him, and I didn't go back and look," she said.
Friends convinced her to report the sighting, and biologists checked the area around the pond. They found tracks and hair, which they sent to Oregon for testing, she said. The hair was found to be consistent with mountain lion hair, although officials say no DNA tests -- the most definitive -- were conducted.
In 2000, a hunter in Monmouth reported seeing an adult mountain lion and a kitten. State wildlife experts examined tracks in the area and said they belonged to a cat that was too big to be a lynx or bobcat. The sightings in Cape Elizabeth and Monmouth will be among the records reviewed by McCollough and others. Confirmed sightings such as those in Maine do not necessarily mean eastern cougars are residing here, he said.
Such sightings are so rare that biologists say those individual cougars could have been captive animals, or pets, that escaped or were released. McCollough said there are an estimated 1,000 captive mountain lions in the eastern U.S., either kept with proper permits or illegally.
A resident population, even a small one, would leave evidence such as carcasses, said Mark Dowling, a director of Cougar Network, a nonprofit research organization based in Massachusetts. Midwestern states still report mountain lions being hit by cars, he said. State biologists in the 21 Eastern states, as well as federal experts, will compile and review sightings records. The U.S. Endangered Species Act requires periodic reviews, and one is long overdue for the eastern cougar, McCollough said.
The review also will focus on scientific research that suggests the eastern mountain lion was, or is, not a separate species at all, but rather genetically the same as the relatively abundant western mountain lion. That finding could be used as an argument to take the eastern mountain lion off the federal endangered list without even settling the question of an eastern population. Although it's clear that state and federal biologists are doubtful that Maine or the other Eastern states have resident cougars, McCollough said the agency is keeping an open mind.
Scientists have been surprised before by the arrival of such animals as coyotes or Canada lynx. And biologists acknowledge the Maine woods provide plenty of room to hide and, once again, have an abundance of prey. McCollough said the agency is expected to issue its report later this year. Any recommendation to de-list the lion would lead to a separate review process. Townsend, meanwhile, continues her quiet walks through the woods in Cape Elizabeth. She's never seen a lion again, and she's OK with that.
"I probably will never, and hope I never, see one again," she said.
They missed one from about two years ago that passed through West Philly before turning up in Delaware. The crime rate in that part of the city took a nose dive for a couple of weeks. My wife and I spotted one in the Pine Barrens of South Jersey about ten years ago. It may have been one that someone owned before it got too big, but it was there.
Fox News 25 had a video of a live "bobcat" taken in an adjacent town, just north of the 2004 sighting linked to.
But be careful what you wish for. Poor 70 year old Jim Hamm almost had his head torn off earlier this year by one of the nice puddy-tats.
... Upon noticing that the lion had her husband's head in its mouth, Nell Hamm, 65, grabbed a 4-inch-wide log and beat the animal repeatedly -- to no avail. She then removed a pen from her husband's pocket and tried to poke it into the cat's eyeball -- but the pen simply bent and became useless.She went back to using the log. The lion eventually let go and, with blood on its snout, stood staring at the woman. She screamed and waved the log until the animal walked away.
Mr. Hamm recently went home from the hospital. What an incredibly strong 70-year old! A little more information here.
Great story!
You beat me to it. I was going to volunteer some of our CA kittys to be shipped out of state to a state of their choice! We have far to many of the large felines and they have lost their fear of man since no one in CA can hunt them now.
we have brown AND Black here around Seneca... i have seen both with mine own eyes.
The great thing is that a confirmed Cougar presence here in Maine would both increase tourism and justify a bigger state government (Dept. of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife) -- a doubleplus good for our two remaining industries!
If you see one Shoot it. You will be saving lives.
http://tchester.org/sgm/lists/lion_attacks_ca.html
List of Mountain Lion Attacks On People in California
This page is a complete list of all attacks that involve physical contact by mountain lions on people in California through 26 January 2007. See Mountain Lion Attacks On People in the U.S. and Canada for an introduction to this page, bibliography and abbreviation list. See also the companion page List of Mountain Lion Attacks On People in the U.S. and Canada not including California.
Deaths are highlighted in red text. There were no deaths in California from lion attacks from 1910 through 1993.
One attagk not listed nere. A 8 year old boy was camping in the San Beradino Mountian and went missing for a couple of years . They found his remains and many think Lilled by a mountian Lion.
9-year-old missing from campground
HANNA FLAT: Mountain lion sightings at nearby campsites have authorities worried.
12:31 AM PDT on Sunday, August 1, 2004
By KARIN MARRIOTT and MELISSA EISELEIN / The Press-Enterprise
SAN BERNARDINO MOUNTAINS - Authorities were searching Saturday evening for a 9-year-old boy who disappeared in the morning from a mountain campground.
David Gonzales of Lake Elsinore was reported missing shortly after 8 a.m. after he went to fetch cookies from a van near his family's campsite at Hanna Flat campground, said U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Tricia Abbas.
"It wasn't very far away. ... Adults were in viewing distance from where he was last seen," Abbas said by phone.
The boy arrived at the campground Friday afternoon with his parents, Jose and Rosenda Gonzales, and two other families from their church, Abbas said. It was the second time the family had camped at Hanna Flat.
Hanna Flat, a family-oriented campground and favorite among off-roaders, is about two miles from Highway 38 along Rim of the World Drive near Fawnskin, a small community on the north side of Big Bear Lake.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/08/10/news/californian/8_9_0420_58_48.txt
Bones may indicate boy killed by cougar
Associated Press — June 3, 2005
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — The discovery of a child's skull and bones near a Big Bear area campground could shed light on whether a cougar killed a 9-year-old boy who disappeared last July from the same campground, authorities said.
http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/hunting/news/story?id=2075458
My hubby and I saw one in the Myrtle Beach, SC area, about 3 miles inland, when we first moved there about 2 years ago. It was running across the field and ran right across the highway in front of our truck and kept on going into the woods. I had a pretty long time watching it run, and I'm convinced it was a cougar. So is the husband, who's a hunter.
Then the deaths started in CA, not one in Oregon yet, because after 1993 OR and CA made it illegal to hunt them with dogs. The only way to successfully hunt them. So now the kittens are getting more and more used to humans, and are getting more bold. The male's domain is a 50 mile radius, the female, about 30 miles. With no predator, man, they will become more abundant, on the west coast at least, and more domestic animals, dogs, cats, sheep, cows will die. Then people will be attacked more and more.
Fish and Wildlife even made it illegal for the farmer/rancher to kill the Cougar when it has attacked and killed their sheep or calves, you have to prove which cougar it was then you can get a permit to hunt it with dogs.
Someone in my family has seen one at least every other year for the last 13 years. They hunt on my property, but are still very cautious. We saw a carcass of a deer last month about 20 feet from our driveway.
"Here, kittykittykitty..."
you shoot one round here, and there's even the SLIGHTEST chance somebody will find out, you damn well better have teeth/claw marks on you proving it attacked you when you shot it else you'll be sitting in jail. in any other situation, you best bury it deep and Never, EVER, tell anybody... or else see above.
While the green area in the west is labeled their "established" range, their former range was all of North America. Eventually, it will be again.
Damn! That redhead is svelt!
Remember the three "Sh's": Shoot, Shovel and Shut up.
2 suspected sightings here in eastern Maine last fall...about 3 miles apart....
we say that round here too... 8^)
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