Mountain lions remain an enigmatic animal for residents of New Hampshire, with New Hampshire Fish and Game reporting three to five sightings per week. Well let's hear from from Sue Morse again science director for the organization keeping track. Rick van de Poll: Yes. Women control our lives. And just one more note about this danger question when even when you look at the states that have extended populations stable populations of mountain lions attacks are relatively rare. So for me as a person who's had the Bobcats right off my grits similar carries sticks to a bobcat The Long Tail obviously very different but those facial markings were overlapping for me. N.H.'s Fish and Game department says there's no proof. You don't know what's going on. So so do what you can get to do what you can to get proof. Residents believe cougars still roam New Hampshire's forests. About two years ago I was at the Laconia airport on the way home from the airport and there's a big lake on one side called Lily Pond. And so. Mountain Lions in New Hampshire-Fact or Fiction 3,207 views Jul 31, 2019 78 Dislike Share Save New Hampshire Fish and Wildlife 634 subscribers During my thirty-one career at the New. So I did a bunch of research and all the documentation I found was there art are not any pieces of DNA of Eastern online. He played a pivotal role and he battled for recognition. I would say that there's going to be the truth in here somewhere. I mean it wasn't your idea. That's too big for Bobcat. In my New Hampshire career I have written several, and seen at least 20, stories along the lines of "local person thinks they saw a mountain lion but there's no actual evidence aside from. Today on the exchange we discuss what residents may have been seeing and what breeding mountain lion pairs would mean for our ecosystem. That's next time on one day. Almost all species disperse greater distances than females. Sue Morse: The big cat really commands the utmost respect not so much fear but fascination. First off if the standard for an agency to go forward with the public and put out a press release that them outlines here their believers are going to say I told you they'd been here the whole time. Patrick Tate: Okay. The DNA the DNA that they were able to pull from the cat suggested that it was a dispersed mountain lion that came. So take care of this problem. So the whole media hype about how scary mountain lions are should should go away immediately and that would be that I think the major thrust of educating folks about these casualties vs.. Sam Evans-Brown: Sam go ahead. So try to take photographs if you see something like this. BRADFORD, N.H. - All that snow in parts of the Northeast has more than just kids jumping for winter joy. NH Fish and Game Wildlife Biologist Patrick Tate reports that so far, mountain lion reports accompanied byphotographs have been misidentified bobcats or housecats, or pictures of mountain lions taken from the Internet and reported as being recorded in New Hampshire. Peter Biello: Sam I wanted to ask you a little bit about that first and then turn to Patrick Tate efficient game. Caller: Hey guys how you doing. The big cat has been extinct here since the mid-1800s. So nowadays we think of this in the Northeast as crazy stuff that people have a mountain lion as a pet. The Lions of New Hampshire: MD44 Links. Patrick Tate: Same here in New Hampshire too. So for our scientists to do the lumping and whatnot. It's listed as population of least concern. Do you get a lot of these these these things that end up being hoaxes. And they asked me about the tail which I just did not remember that tail out of that whole experience. But the state always denies it, and none of us know why they deny it. So one thing I'll add we're talking about natural dispensers but talking with the conservation officer in the 1980s they recall going to a residence telling a person you can live here but your mountain lion can't. They get a lot of media attention but compared to the the amount of times that a mountain lion could attack a person but doesn't because they don't typically view us as prey. Patrick Tate: Exactly I was gonna bring that up juvenile male of. That's the real story is they can't follow up on every one of these sightings. So do they. Yeah 13 to 15 years ago 13 to 15 years ago. So that's the specimen that you find going long distances. So maybe a good pet for you but not for your neighbor if you just stop by unannounced. Sam what's the incentive for the government to deny allegedly. Peter Biello: But clearly you know you're saying like hoaxes people who claim to have seen a mountain lion but knowingly have not or are appropriating photos taken elsewhere of legit mountain lion say out West where they people acknowledge that they exist certainly knowingly or unknowingly in this case the person who sent it to me said hey a friend of mine sent me this photo and said he took it on his back porch also. To date, the Department has not received any verifiable evidence (photographic or DNA)of mountain lions existing in New Hampshire. As wildlife biologists, wed be fascinated to say 'look look what was found in our state.'. No doubt in my mind it was. Administrative Links. Are there Mountain Lions in NH? It was in the spring flash kind of early summer and my wife looked at you look at the size of an adult bear and we were up in arms. The panther, Fells concolor, is a beast of many names, most frequently referred to in New Hampshire history as catamount, but sometimes known locally as "Indian Devil" or "Carcajou", under which . So for those reasons I don't believe the standards are too high the amount of game cameras out on the landscape to record images department alone through contracts had over 150 throughout the state biologists go through various deer yards throughout the year. I was at the Sentinel as a reporter there for about four years and during that time I probably wrote close to a half dozen stories or so on this topic including a lengthy feature at one point that in which I spoke to several people from around the banana region claimed to have seen mountain lions that at one time or another. Caller: Are probably. I looked at the picture and asked me what do you see in the picture and I wrote back. On a dirt road. A monthly donation of $5 makes a real difference. Mountain lions ( Puma concolor) are one of the six native species of wild cats in North America. I've actually had to walk in on one or two now and look at what was going on and figured out what was going on. 8 9 2 6 4 7 7. It's good to talk to you. People go through great lengths to create hoaxes like this. He said matter of fact I do. Caller: I cannot recall or see the tail in my in my image of it. For starters, part of the confusion might come from the fact that the eastern cougar was taken off the endangered species list earlier this year. Caller: And then there's the Lily Pond Road and then there's a six foot tall fence. Mountain Lions are a mythical creature in New Hampshire with strong feelings on both sides of the question: are there Mountain Lions in New Hampshire? Peter Biello: I did mention four feet nose to tail would be kind of small for a mountain lion. OK. Rick van de Poll: Rick and I would add that if a mountain lion male takes up residence and successfully finds a female as pets there's gonna be a lot more evidence there will be like deer carcasses up in trees and territorial marking and claw marks and tracks and it you know dispersal is gonna be very tough to see or observed but residential parrots a totally different story. This is a machine-generated transcript, and may contain errors. So so they're just a very resilient species and they're pretty they're pretty neat. They reported seeing the big tail and everything everything. What do you think that. N.H.'s Fish and Game department says there's no proof mountain lions live in the state, yet residents from Bedford to Berlin have been reporting sightings for years. Verifiable pictures recorded by the observing person or a trail camera. Sam Evans-Brown: Well first I want to sort of explain why what the theory is but then also throw a bit of cold water on it because I don't think there's much much logic behind it but essentially is that if fish and game were to acknowledge that there was a population of Mount lions in the state there's a chance that something like a listing under the federal Endangered Species Act might happen and then there'd be you know some they'd have to put a plan in place to protect the species there'd be you know restrictions put on development. Caller: Absolutely. I mean that so many of them are false sightings we. Residents Report Mountain Lion Sighting By Elysia Rodriguez Published August 11, 2015 A southern New Hampshire neighborhood believes a mountain lion is roaming the woods near their homes. Peter Biello: And Carl before you continue I think Patrick Tate just give me a second. And really whenever you hear tiny code and long rope like tale it's kind of hard to pin this sighting on any other creature rather than an outline or just nothing else really matches that description. Peter Biello: This is the exchange on an HD PR fine Peter Biello and today we're talking with folks who can tell us about the mysterious elusive mountain line and whether or not it is actually here in New Hampshire. Are these big cats back?Subscribe to WMUR on YouTube now for more: http://bit.ly/1lOjX9CGet more Manchester news: http://wmur.comLike us: http://facebook.com. I have one that's more elaborate than that. So yeah as far as wildlife species that put deer and trees know there aren't any others that I know of that put deer in trees just just humans might be responsible for that. They were able to do all that by genetics. The supervisor that hired me in the game division in October of 1978 passed on to me this whole big folder of mountain lion information and sightings going back probably a couple decades. I tracked cats and all the western states. But also I think it proves the opposite point which is that sometimes they're pretty secretive because all the way from Minnesota where the where was the first time was picked up on a game camera to New York. You saw what you saw. Sam Evans-Brown: Well and I think and the last takeaway here is everyone I think probably agrees that any possible sightings that have been seen. I didn't see him online. From: Boomerdog in OK 08-Oct-07 Your support makes this news available to everyone. Known to exist in the state for over well over a hundred years. Patrick Tate: I would say well when social media first started they picked up the hoaxes became much more prevalent in the last four or five years hoaxes have died down completely. Mountain Lion report and as a biologist for the state that's a situation where if he said to me what did I see. Sam Evans-Brown: Certainly that is a thing I've heard but again you have to think of the incentives involved here. We live around Cold Springs Campground and it was undeniably a mountain lion. Residents believe cougars still roam New Hampshire's forests There's no attraction. Yeah I did. Thank you. Like why would you want one wildlife. Sam Evans Brown. I have no doubt that there are mountain lion roaming New Hampshire. Think you've seen a mountain lion? As recently as 2011 there was one young male mountain lion that cruised all the way from the black hills of South Dakota, up over the Great Lakes, down through New Yorkgetting spotted all along the waykilled a beaver near the Quabbin Reservoir in Central Massachusetts, left behind prints and DNA at that site, and then was hit by a car in Connecticut. Patrick Tate: While a juvenile not a juvenile I guess if you want nodes to the base of the tail for juvenile that wouldn't be small at all. And it came out we could see it had and we could see its long swooping tail. Each person had their own copy and now it was identify the trees the species of tree matched. Patrick Tate: It became a very interesting investigation over time because it started becoming. So it is possible to see male Mountain lions roam into the northeast - there was one hit by a car in CT a number of years back - but we don't have a breeding population of Mountain lions in New England. What's interesting about Bobcats is here in the Northeast we have some very large bobcats. Some of the reports that I looked into that were actually on file at the local fish and game office were even from people who did not live locally. I live pretty much on the town line of Greenfield just a couple of miles down in the Greenfield. Rick van de Poll: Absolutely. Deer Bear Moose Wolves Fisher Mountain Lions. There are corollaries in other states. Right. Hunting is legal, but closely regulated by the state. Yes and you want to share what you learned. She was having a garden party on her back porch and everybody in the party saw this mountain lion across the field down below the porch. Chartered: 1973 . DNA from scat or from fur, a clear track that is confirmed by an expert, or a photo that clearly shows a mountain lion. Patrick Tate: My line being a large predator a cat watch ambush his prey animal that hasn't been. Caller: Yeah I hadn't experienced blastoff fall so this was around September and I was driving from Webster into Concord on Horse Hill Road and anybody in the area would know I was right near the Red Barn and all of a sudden this animal jumps out of the woods and it bounded across the road in about two two giant leaps and stopped in the field just on the other side. But before I go any further I want to say we do not have sufficient game. Less than a year later I found a scat on the swamp range and I was working at the time with a fellow at the Michigan wildlife habitat Federation. Patrick Tate: Yes. Peter Biello: And then it ran away okay. People were calling the New Hampshire Fish and Game director's office saying why are you dragging your feet on this. Well I can't tell you what you saw. Not one picture of him online while the person meet with us. What's going on. There were several sightings in CT over the last few months. Let's look for other evidence. Peter Biello: Wow. And still the the folks there did weren't able to come up with it with 100 percent certainty what deposited that scat. Caller: So I've been telling this story for five years or so and very few people believe me. If you believe you have seen a mountain lion and want to report it to NH Fish and Game, please contact the Wildlife Division at (603) 271-2461 or [email protected] to request an observation report form. I saw that had this giant the bobcat had this giant sweeping which is John Bobcat don't have big sweeping tails. Let's go now to to Kyle in Keene I believe Kyle is this Kyle Jarvis from the Keene Sentinel a former reporter and former reporter. But are there mountain lions living in New Hampshire? I can't tell you what you saw but it sounds like a mountain lion. Monday, December 5th: Mountain Lions in New Hampshire? And there are thousands of mountain lions killed every year legally through hunting, and there have been untold tens of thousands of mountain lions killed by hunters over the last hundred years, says Mark Elbroch, the Puma Program Director for Panthera, a global wild cat conservation organization, So even the folks who live with mountain lions still have a fancy and see something thats not there to me thats incredible.. I've seen him in the woods and that was not a bobcat but I was looking at. Caller: Well I think Patrick I recognized your name. Get your tickets today and one for fifty dollars or six for 150 at NH PR and board. We're going to talk a little bit more about habitat first but then we'll get into sightings. However, as far as I can tell theres no Deep State Conspiracy to cover up a breeding population of cougars in the Granite State. There wasn't a distinct subspecies the North American mountain lion is all is all one species and then you can find a genetically distinct South American subspecies. Peter Biello: Give us a call 1 800 8 9 2 6 4 7 7 you can also send us an email exchange at an HP morgue. 19 So so in 2011 a mountain lion was killed in a car accident in Connecticut a car hit a mountain lion and killed it. Good morning guys. You need a permit to have that. There are mountain lion in Massachusetts. It was really muscular looking cat I mean is that like a side angle to me. The big cat has been extinct at least the eastern mountain lion has been extinct here since the mid 80s hundreds. Does not test random Scouts. The most common areas to see mountain lions in Arizona are in places of rocky and mountainous terrain. And Rick van de Poll naturalist and founder of ecosystem management consultants of New England. Join as a $8 per month sustainer and get our brand-new owl umbrella! Peter Biello: Well John thanks very much for the story really appreciate it. nh.gov | privacy policy | accessibility policy
The term is because mascots notwithstanding right that they're referred to with a lot of different terms and sometimes they can be confused with a lot of different terms. Okay. How to Report a Possible Mountain Lion Sighting. If youve got photo trap evidence of a Mountain Lion, send it in, and we'll send it along to the appropriate state or federal agency! Caller: It had just left that field and was out.