Catamount Dreams

A specter is haunting the eastern woodlands.  From the Smokies to the Maritimes, rumors of catamounts persist and accumulate, along with a small but growing body of tangible field evidence that a few cougars, at least, have made a reappearance here.  This second largest New World feline is part of our wilderness mythology, a symbol of our vanished frontier and emblem of redemption for our recovering woodlands.  Even the keen of the catamount is legendary; modern cougars are remarkably non-vocal and some researchers speculate that those cats that once did scream -probably females in heat - were the first to be taken by the settlers' powder and ball. 

The mountain lion had one of the largest historic ranges of any mammal, stretching throughout the Americas from the boreal Canada to Patagonia, and from coast to coast across the United States.  The eastern cougar (felis concolor cougar) was driven from the East by declining forest habitat, the near loss of the White-tailed deer, and by intensive hunting.    It was last recorded in Massachusetts in 1858, was extirpated from New York by 1908, and is now officially represented only by the remnant Florida Panther subspecies, federally listed as endangered since 1973.   

There are perhaps as many as 50,000 cougars west of the Mississippi that do not enjoy such protection, and they appear to be expanding further east.  The Cougar Network, a nonprofit conservation organization that has conducted comprehensive research on the big cat's distribution in North America for over three years, documents evidence of movement of western cougars into parts of the Midwest, including numerous confirmed sitings in Nebraska and even from Illinois. 

From a wildlife agency perspective, it is highly improbable that there are established, breeding populations of the eastern subspecies of mountain lion outside of Florida.  The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation says the following on its Eastern Cougar Fact Sheet:

We in New York receive a few reports of cougar sightings each year from throughout the state.  In many instances it is a case of mistaken identity. Other cats, fishers or dogs are the animals probably seen. Once in a great while a real cougar is sighted. Based on our experiences, it is safe to assume that these animals have been intentionally or unintentionally released by people. Contrary to some peoples beliefs, they are not part of a native, self sustaining population. Cougars are not ghosts. They leave tracks which would be regularly seen in any area frequented by them. If there were enough cougars for a population, there would be many sets of tracks readily available for people to see throughout the year.

Others disagree.  It took coyotes more than 40 years to establish viable populations in New York after they first appeared the state in the 1920s.  Now they are widespread and well established everywhere except on Long Island, and even that may not be completely beyond their grasp: a coyote turned up a couple of years ago in Central Park!  The eastern Coyote is also on Cape Cod and the Elizabeth Islands in Massachusetts, and to do that involved some combination of trotting over the Bourne or Sagamore bridges, hopping a ferry, or making a cold swim in fast water.  Given time and enough connected habitat, an expanding western mountain lion population should find sufficient deep woods and an abundance of white-tailed deer up and down the Appalachians.   Whether we can tolerate the presence of a top predator in the densely populated East is a far different matter and likely to be the ultimate limiting factor in their recolonization.

I have heard anecdotal first-hand accounts of catamount sitings from Cornwall Bridge, Connecticut to the Taconic State Parkway in Columbia County, New York.  People I know to be sane and informed naturalists have spoken with complete conviction of their encounters with big cats in western Massachusetts and northwest Connecticut.  Reports from even more populous regions of New England periodically surface, like the persistent sitings of a big cat in Beverly, MA  north of Boston a couple of years ago.  A good friend and excellent field biologist found a deer carcass that had been killed by bites to the back of the neck, dragged and partially buried: classic lion behavior.  We both saw large claw sharpening marks high on the side of a tree in that same vicinity: big bobcat, or lion?

Something very primal and embedded in my psyche wants to believe that the eastern wilderness is large enough even for this wide ranging and lamented lost carnivore.  Yet I know how much my desire to see a mountain lion colors my vision.  Every tawny blur crossing the road in the distance screams the wished-for "lion" before my eyes register "deer" or "coyote" or "bobcat" or "dog".  And if it is true that a population of mountain lions from whatever source - feral released captives or westerners moving East- does reestablish in parts of its historic eastern range, will we suffer them to remain? 

The reintroduction of the gray wolf in the Northwest has been phenomenally successful - 1,000 animals in numerous reproducing packs, half of these in Idaho alone - but so rapid that the backlash from ranchers and residents in wolf country has been intense.  We already have a robust and expanding black bear population in Eastern New York and southern New England, growing at a faster rate than available wildlife management tools can moderate, and it seems likely that their numbers will exceed our tolerance threshold before they hit their ecological limits.   In 2002 a black bear tragically killed a 5 month old girl at a campground in Fallsburg, NY, about 90 miles from New York City.  It will not matter that this was an extraordinarily rare occurrence, or that a vastly larger number of people will die as a result of collisions with deer than will ever encounter mountain lions.  What makes us fear for our children, and to a lesser degree for our livelihoods, will dictate how we respond to carnivores in our backyards.

I spent nearly four years in remote parts of southern Africa, in areas where humans were not the undisputed top of the food chain.  I walked unarmed through dense bush where breeding herds of elephants had recently passed, and heard stories of three, fatal human encounters with elephants in that area during the previous decade that were fresh in the minds of the residents.   I have seen Ju/'hoansi bushmen, the so-called "harmless people" of the Kalahari, light the veld on fire after spying a venomous snake near their settlements.  Leopards preying on livestock can mean the difference between survival and starvation for those trying to subsist in non-equilibrium environments.  For some rural Africans, in ways reminiscent to narcotics dealing in other communities, poaching became one of the few perceived ways to break the cycle of poverty. 

The conflict between people and wildlife in rural Africa was, if anything, more acute than even in the western United States.  Here in New England, rural livelihoods affected by the deprecations of large carnivores are a small percentage of the regional economy and farmers are already adjusting their husbandry practices to account for predation from coyotes and the occasional bear.  Yet those very Africans most affected by competition for shared resources with wildlife also began to embrace conservation as a means of additional security and livelihood diversification. 

I have written about Community-based Conservation success in Namibia, and it offers hope that conservation threats can become opportunities.  We in the Litchfield Hills, and wherever our large predators are making a comeback, might find there is much to emulate in the Namibian example of local people making informed management decisions, becoming active stewards as well as direct beneficiaries of wildlife conservation.  Let me be clear; I do not advocate that we simply abandon federal oversight, wash our hands like Pontius Pilate and let the states manage our natural resources as they see fit.  Too much has been squandered, pandered, and sacrificed with that approach.  But I continue to believe that those who live closest to the resources need to be directly involved in making informed conservation decisions, and are unlikely to change their behaviors or throw their support behind policies imposed from outside.  That old "taxation without representation" thorn still sits uncomfortably under the American saddle.

And the catamounts that roam our restless dreams?  Perhaps we will have to accept an eastern wilderness without cougars, just as our skies no longer darken with the birds of passage, the heath hen no longer drums in our sand plains, and salmon may one day may fail for the last time to return the wide Connecticut.  Are they our own Lord God Bird, holding out undetected like the ivory bill,  waiting in the wings only to to step back  on stage once more?  For now, I believe the occassional sitings will continue to accumulate, settling like chestnut leaves from a long vanished canopy, until at some time in the not too distant future the question will no longer be "are they here", but "how can they remain with us?"

Comments

[Marilyn]

I saw what a Mountain Lion in Sutton MA around midnight a few months ago...every one is telling me I am crazy. I know what I saw and I looked it up on line to confirm and I am 100% positive it was a mountain lion. It was blonde HUGE and had a long tail! Amazing and scary!

[Dolores]

I live in Merrimac, MA, and at 7:45 this morning, I believe I saw a mountain lion in the back near the brooke/woods line. Called Police, and was very glad they found nothing, as the office was going to shoot it if he did! It was gold, long tail, and if it was a domestic cat, it was HUGE!
Has anyone else seen this animal?

[Jan Greer]

I was driving on my road about 9:30 at night and this young cougar about 30-50 lbs. ran out to cross the road, it was tan with dark edging short hair with curled back ears, I was amazed to see this panther which I had seen on several occasions growing up in rural central Texas running like a wild animal like a leopard. What was it doing in a neighborhood with people living close by? This was a lion type creature not a bobcat with longer hair and pointy ears it was sleek with rounded ears.

[Dawn]

I live in Old Chatham in northeast Columbia County. Just about an hour ago, I was sitting on my porch while talking on the phone when an animal came crashing through the bushes on the other side of my stream, some 35-40 feet away. At first, I thought it was a deer but when it stood still and I focused, I said to my friend on the phone, "OH MY GOD, it's a mountain lion!" To which she replied, "Get out! You sure it isn't a deer?"
there was no mistaking it because it stood there and stared at me, intensely, showing it's long body off. My dog was curled in a bed next to me and for the first time, I thought, his diminished hearing is useful. The big cat continued to stare for about a full minute (a long time) before jumping down from the stone wall and back into the woods. Incredible!!

[pat]

I live in the lower part of Dutchess County near Whaley Lake, at an altitude of 1000ft. I have seen (if I am closer than 100 feet I consider it an 'encounter'), the elusive Bobcat on 2 occasions(once he or she flushed out a family of white tails into my yard, he came up empty handed), they spend little time hanging around. Another late night I had to stop the car to let a Black Bear cross the road in front of me 12:30AM, she also came on my deck and ate my birdseed.
The sighting (at around 8:30am) of a Catamount, was the most enjoyable. At first I thought oh a Bobcat...but then I said wow "tan in color, larger than a medium sized dog,hmmm then as he emerged from the brush, I noted the tail..no bob...long and curled...I thought to myself "this is a once in a lifetime event",I mean what are the chances of me getting into my car looking out (60 feet)at the exact moment it cautiously came out of the woods through some tall grass...it looked at me then adeptly scaled the 80 foot rock face next to the house. I have watched buzzards court, scarlet tanangers play, hawks kill snakes and grasshoppers, foxes sneek by(eyeing my rabits no doubt),coyotes on the hunt, all from a window that views the the flat open ground between me and the hill...I am sure the animals are wondering...hey why'd this idiot put his funny lookin shelter right in the middle of our hunting ground.

[N.A. Gleixner]

My companion and I spotted a large, dark colored cat in Great Barrington, near the local brewery at the edge of a big field around dusk. Way off in the distance, there was a lone deer keeping an eye on the cat. At one point the cat looked up at us and we saw the shine of yellow eyes for a quick second. We left not long after that.

[RA Jones]

Twice recently I have seen a big cat in Taghkanic in Columbia County. First sighting was in mid summer. It was walking through dense brush along the lake. The second sighting was August 29, 2008 near same location but this time I was alerted to its presence by the insanely loud racket made by a bunch of crows. There it was trotting across the lawn and into the dense brush. I was about 1/4 mile away with binoculars. So clearly saw it was a cat even without the binoculars. I am not certain exactly what kind of cat it is but it is not a bobcat. It is tawny and the tail curls up with a bit of white on it. I am so curious to know what it is.

[M. Chamlin]

In June of 2006 my wife and I observed a cougar--perhaps 70 lbs.--stalking a rabbit within 15 yards of our home in Columbia County, NY. We were indoors and could see everything very clearly through the window. It was unmistakably a cougar and not a linx or bobcat. It's behavior was classic "lion" in the way it stalked, ran and struck at the rabbit with its paw. The rabbit escaped in the dense underbrush. Some neigbors confirm occaisional sightings of these cats. Others, even those who spend a great deal of time outdoors, have never seen one.

[kerry]

i saw two baby cougars last night in lenox mass. it was about 11:40pm and i was driving down a private drive and my high beams froze some deer......then a few seconds later these two adorable baby mountain lions went bouncing awkwardly down the driveway, across rt 7A and into some thick cover on the other side. i looked around for the mother cat for a few minutes but didn't see her. it was pretty damn cool. and NO they were not bobcats or golden retrievers or anything of the like. an adult lion was spotted in the same area by some construction workers several months earlier.

[Robin Keohane]

I have enjoyed this site. Back in the winter of 2001 I was at our family home in New Brunswik, Canada along the St Johns river. My mother and I were driving back from Fredricton at about 11pm, it was a cool -30 degrees out and the Trans Canada was abit more desolate than usual. I noticed a large tawny brown object approaching the road to cross out of the corner of my eye and immediately slowed to allow what I thought was a deer. My brights were on and my mom said that's no deer. I was shocked to my surprise to see this beautiful majestic animal swaggering along. He looked toward the car did not pick up pace and kept walking toward the river for some unfrozen water by the hydro. To see this animal in the wild was a privilege.