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 wishful thinking and mistaken sightings, which is the same evidence we have for Bigfoot, alien abductions and the trickle-down theory of economics.”
Here’s a GG post from 2016 (“Certainty about mountain lions shows why humans argue so much“), and here’s one from 2018 and here’s one from 2019, in which an experienced wildlife biologist explains why he isn’t convinced by all the claims.
The Monitor had another such story this weekend, and as I speak it’s the best-read story on the website and has 10 times the usual interaction on the paper’s Facebook page, with 94 (and counting) comments. Most of those comments are variations of “I saw one!!!” with a sprinkling of “Fish and Game won’t admit it because <insert conspiracy theory here>” but happily there are a few sensible ones, such as the very first comment:
“1000’s of game cams throughout NH and not one pic – ever!!! I guess they are all vegetarians no has had any killed sheep, goats, cows or anything else.”
And that, of course, is the unassailable argument. If there was actually any population of mountain lions in New Hampshire or New England we’d have real evidence, just as we do for other very shy carnivores like the lynx. We don’t have any, so there aren’t any. (Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, you say? Wrong: it is very much evidence of absence when there is lots and lots and lots of effort to gather that evidence.)
The interesting question, however, is why so many people are certain they’ve seen mountain lions but few if any make the same claim for wolves, which are much closer (they’re in Quebec) and are just as fascinating and dangerous. Patrick Tate, the Fish & Game wildlife biologist who handles cougar claims, told me that he gets maybe 2-3 wolf reports a year – “some years there are zero” – as compared to scores, maybe hundreds, of cougar reports.
“To date (wolf) reports with pictures have been eastern coyote and a few wolf/dog hybrids (escaped domestic animals). Wolf/dog hybrids are legal pets in NH under Department of Agriculture. Keeping a wolf/dog hybrid requires certain measures are taken (see RSA 466-a).”
Maybe coyotes fill our scary-canine mental niche so there’s no need to imagine wolves, in a way that bobcats don’t fill the scary-feline niche?
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I won’t swear I’ve seen one, but one night some kind of big cat was walking up my driveway in Derry as I got home and I followed it with my truck. It was certainly bigger than my German Shepherd and I’d estimate it at least reached the top of my bumper on my Ram 1500. I tried to determine what it was by photos and descriptions online, and mountain lion was the only thing that fit.
They are called Mountain lions probably because they prefer to live in remote mountain areas that are difficult for humans to reach. Communities with humans are not likely to be advantageous for them to venture into much.
Also, they are nocturnal and very elusive.
I know of sightings in New York state. New Hampshire’s environment isn’t very different than NY’s, so they’re probably there too. If you don’t see them in the immediate Concord area, then go up to the White Mountains, or even further north. I’ll bet they are there.
I love that these people seem so adamant when denying Catamounts. Having seen one I beg to differ!
As a person with lots of hours on the backroads and in the woods I can easily tell the difference between the type of woodland creatures and mot assuredly saw a mountain lion in LEBANON.
I haven’t seen one, but found tracks in my yard in Etna (rural area of Hanover) about 20 years ago. The cat was running and chasing a squirrel, which apparently escaped up a tree. I notified NHFW, but they told me the tracks were made by a deer. Really? I said. So a deer would chase a squirrel to a tree? About a week later, a friend discussed my experience with a local person, who said she’d seen a cat crouching in the tall grass while she was gardening. The cat was clearly watching her. Several weeks later, there was an article in the local newspaper (Valley News). A woman who lived a few miles away had photographed a big cat that was sitting next to a stone-lined pool in her yard. The cat appeared to be watching her fish. The state’s official word was the cat was actually a dog. Yep. Dogs have two prominent ridges on their heads, long tails, and love to watch fish.
45 years ago I was taking a reupholstering class at Lebanon College. I lived in Winsor VT and was taking Route 12A N to Lebanon. It was a wet snowy evening and I was about half way between Plainfield, NH and Lebanon.
All of a sudden this creature jumped from a small hill into the road and stopped blinded by my headlights. At first I though it was a deer because of its color but it wasn’t and I knew immediately that it was a Mounting Lion. It wasn’t as tall as a deer, it had basically the same coloring as a deer, it had a long body, and a long tail that curved at the end.
I know 5 people who have seen a mountain lion. Three saw it a few times when together.
I can only assume that state officials continue to say that there are no mountains lions because they don’t want people hunting them.
Building off of that, let’s think about the theoreticals – what would be the legal issues with the reappearance of a critically endangered mammal in NH or VT? Would establishment of protected habitat be required? Would two cash poor states and respective departmetns have to deal with a lot more paperwork and animal management issues?
Regardless, NH DES should just send people out with PCR sample kits to whoever reports a sighting and see if anything amplifies. To heck with the canard that it didn’t pose for a trail cam or kill a chicken in the open.
PCR of what? If there was something to get a DNA sample from – fur snagged on a fence, scat, blood left behind at a kill site (heck – how about a confirmed kill site!) – we wouldn’t be having this debate. It’s the total lack of this kind of evidence, which exists for all other predators, that makes it clear cougars aren’t here yet.
Our reliance on eyeballs is a limitation to how we can perceive the microscopic. Take multiple soil samples at the spot identified by the witness, swab putative footprints, etc.
I’m thinking specifically about how many agencies and organizations are using PCR to scan for the presence of invasive and endangered species via trace amounts of environmental DNA (eDNA). Again, no eyeballs necessary, just a thermocycler and a proper respect for the necessary controls.
cf:
https://biomeme.com/environmental-dna/
https://www.usbr.gov/mussels/docs/eDNA.pdf
Fine but you’ve got to have a specific something to take samples from – it’s not like you’re going to swab down every bit of vegetation within the radius of “I saw it go into the woods over there” (gestures vaguely). And which one of these vague reports are you going to spend taxpayer dollars on sampling?
Wait…what? Trickle-down economics aren’t real?
I not only saw one, I have PROOF. In Goffstown (Just over the Manchester line), one walked across the road right in front of my car. I had a 1080p dashcam running. It has GPS info embedded in the saved video (proving location and time – 4:50 pm).
This happened two days ago (9/20/21). I’m planning to send the video to WMUR local news.
It was about 2 to 2.5 feet tall to the top of shoulders.
I see bobcats all the time, I know the difference.
That would be amazing! I will happily eat my words if solid proof arrives. You’ll forgive me if I wait to actually see the proof.
About 20 years ago, DNA evidence verified the presence of a cougar in a Maine town, about 60 miles north — or east — of a NH border. If a cougar is DNA-documented there, why wouldn’t they also be in the forests of NH and VT?
Has that video posted anywhere yet – we would really like to see it!
Perhaps in a world where the realm of mystery is often displaced by science explains why catamounts hold maintain such an oversized intrigue. Also, aren’t there shreds of collective guilt operating here? That is, with a veritable avalanche of animal species succumbing to human encroachment, belief in the catamounts’ existence lightens our burden. People also just like to root for the underdog – which an elusive catamount would surely embody! On a different tack, could mountain lions from the southern Appalachians be transplanted? While slightly different, couldn’t they adapt to the Green Mountains environment? It’d surely make for a lively debate, a’yup!