I just want to tell you a story that I read. Patrick Tate: Exactly I was gonna bring that up juvenile male of. Mountain Lions | Wildlife | New Hampshire Fish and Game Department And because you know things flow downhill and I was pushed to go investigate it more and met with the individual two or three times and there was a bunch of inconsistencies about the photograph. Some argue that it's a leap of faith. I wasn't employed as biologists at the time of a situation that's been reported but so I started digging into this report and spoke with another wildlife biologist with the agency and said Do you know anything about this. Support for an age PR comes from you our listeners. And there's there's no evidence of that cat's movement in that entire you know 12 hundred miles stretch of its journey. We mentioned that one cat that was hit by a car where it has it that it was a male looking for me. If so that's for us as an agency. Sam Evans Brown. On a dirt road. Sandy Hodskins, owner of West Meadow Farm in Bradford, New Hampshire, took time from shoveling Wednesday to enjoy the snow with her horse, West Wind. And I think this is a really interesting story for a couple of reasons one is that it proves what Pat was saying which that basically from New York state where its traces was really picked up on a game camera around Lake George all the way down to Connecticut there was numerous. These young males are tracking looking for mates and if they don't find a mate they just keep moving and moving and moving. Peter Biello: Well I want to ask Patrick about one of these stories a few years ago you had a story about someone who claimed to. Tell us your story. So so they're just a very resilient species and they're pretty they're pretty neat. Mountain lions don't usually travel more than 100 miles from where they are born. But along the lines of the conspiracy theories as you mentioned earlier there there was a bit of a sense on behalf of what I'll call the promo online community who felt that fishing gain maybe not even so much in a spoken policy but maybe sort of an unspoken policy did not want to find themselves in a situation where they had to spend money to create a management plan and so forth. So there's even debate about that very subject. Mountain Lions | Wildlife | New Hampshire Fish and Game Department Its distinctive featurethe one that sets it apart from other North American wild catsis its tail, which is thick and often as long as its body. But Absence of Evidence Is Not Evidence of Absence, Right? Sort of dropped onto the SD card of a camera he'd set up out in the wild. Listeners we'd love to hear some of your thoughts on this. So for our scientists to do the lumping and whatnot. Rick van de Poll: Rick your thoughts. Listeners give us a call if you'd like. Theres tracks everywhere. There have been several sightings of mountain lions in New Hampshire recently. We live around Cold Springs Campground and it was undeniably a mountain lion. But no proof was offered. We did a short segment about mountain lion sightings earlier this year and and after which I was sent a photo and also a video recording that was mostly just audio because it was so dark the photo just a quick reverse Google image search you can put images online and see where else where else they've been posted revealed that the photo had been taking out taken out in Wyoming and has been used you know hundreds of times to claim and the person who sent it to me said it had been taken New Hampshire. I looked at the picture and asked me what do you see in the picture and I wrote back. That's what we're seeing is dispersing mountain lions from the West who are just making their way through. M from Tree Hill author series presenting Diane lay back. The big cat has been extinct here since the mid-1800s. Peter Biello: Mm hmm. Your support makes this news available to everyone. Pat do they typically just move around a lot. We'll push great photos to the front page. Peter Biello: The number is 1 800 8 9 2 6 4 7 7. So. Select image for larger view. I've had a number of people call up and say I found a scout in the woods and I want it DNA identified. And so I just wanted to share my share my experience with you guys and it was pretty awesome to see if you get to see one albeit it was in the brush. Deer Bear Moose Grey Wolf Coyote Foxes Fisher Mountain Lion NH Wildlife History. 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. How many mountain lions are in New Hampshire? - AnswersAll I can't. Today on the exchange we discuss what residents may have been seeing and what breeding mountain lion pairs would mean for our ecosystem. The trouble with accepting every reported sighting as a confirmed mountain lion is that there are so many mistaken identifications. This is a machine-generated transcript, and may contain errors. There are corollaries in other states. Peter Biello: This is the exchange on an HP yard today we're talking about the mysterious elusive majestic Mystic Mountain Lion. The second one was not only fresh but when I actually put my hand on it it was you know smelled like cat and I it's there's no denying a fresh mountain lions get if you can tell it every story that KOAT. Caller: I cannot recall or see the tail in my in my image of it. Sam Evans-Brown: And when we talk about subspecies this actually leads to to an interesting tangent which is that the field of biology recently has been sort of revolutionized by the use of DNA to determine what subspecies are. The nonbelievers are going to say Show us your evidence and show us prove this to us. Why do people keep seeing mountain lions (which aren't here) but not A 140-pound male mountain lion was hit by a car and killed in 2011 in Milford, Connecticut. Caller: It had to be a mountain lion convinced I was about 30. NHPR is nonprofit and independent. And so far we have not had any positive mark lion scats or any DNA. I just stood there just a second and I came to a complete stop and then I ran away. For me as a person who's handled many bobcats and looked at many pictures Bobcat the White chin Bobcat right off is what comes out to me and then the black the the roughs on our Bobcats we'll have sometimes have black fringes on them. Almost all species disperse greater distances than females. These were normal everyday folks. m from a weed family Automotive on store Street in Concord is serving the Concord area families automotive needs since 1995. So we tossed these terms around but really the term subspecies has been sort of redefined in our lifetimes. The way that we define species has undergone a revolution with the advent of DNA testing. Mountain Lion Population By State: 2023 Data [Statistics] Patrick Tate: It's wow interesting that you brought this up because I've had people report I saw cardamom. Some are included in lists of mountains, such as the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) list of the Hundred Highest peaks of New England, or the . So hey, just me shooting from the hip, maybe there are a couple mountain lions skulking about. Its closest living relative is the cheetah. I mean they're a survivor. 50 feet above the most. I think as Pat was saying you know 35 to 50 pounds on a male be reasonable range whereas mountain lions you're up to 100 110 maybe even 130 pounds on a big male. 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. Patrick Tate: Yes. Thank you very much for listening. However the scarring on the trees did not and the angles were off. Thank you for visiting the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department website. So I certainly can't dispute anything that they said there's no evidence for me to go by to verify or say what my thoughts are on the situation. We're going to talk a little bit more about habitat first but then we'll get into sightings. Can you look into this picture. It's not a skinny rope like tail like a housecat. Peter Biello: And that will make identification for a layperson rather difficult. 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. So and so the idea that they can follow up on every individual sighting is just crazy right. Saddleback Mountain Lions She quotes a biologist in Lyme New Hampshire who who is keeping two mountain lions himself so in the not too distant past in the early nineteen hundreds it was perhaps more common and still in Maine. There have been several sightings of mountain lions in New Hampshire recently. Numerous scat and fur specimens have been turned in as part of mountain lion report investigations; DNA identification has shown these submitted samples to be from domestic dog, coyote, bobcat andraccoon. That's the real story is they can't follow up on every one of these sightings. Information that weed family automotive dot com sunny for today high temperatures low to mid 80s clear tonight overnight lows in the 50s tomorrow sunny highs in the upper 80s. Are there mountain lions in New Hampshire? : r/newhampshire - reddit We want answers. 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. They are the same thing. Which which I think Pat and I have both experienced. Its impossible to say, but I think the odds are pretty good that some of these sightings are legit. If you missed part of today's program listen to the exchange. I've seen him in the woods and that was not a bobcat but I was looking at. The Eastern mountain lion is extinct in the eastern United States and Canada, but in 2011, a . Today, their range stretches from the Yukon Territory in Canada along the western coast of the United States, all the way to the Southern Andes in Chile. 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. So do they. For all the men out there that don't realize it. What's going on. Patrick Tate: So Cougar Mountain Lion katama. Thank you very much for being here. Patrick Tate: So it's very typical. Patrick Tate: I've had hunters hang deer carcasses forbidding wildlife entries. They're the generalists that made it through both the arrival of the Clovis people with their with their spears and then the Europeans with their guns. Patrick Tate: In theory it's a passing ball of a court and it goes wherever the bottom Ball wants to go. So I learned about what Rick just reported through a heart of heart of New Hampshire a letter and. Right. This is the exchange. And those and that's how you can go from a story that Pat says I have nothing to say about that to a story that you know could be the first verified sighting in over 100 years. Since 1917, Lions clubs have offered people the opportunity to give something back to their communities. I'm Peter Biello in for Laura NOI. I mean no doubt a seen Bobcat seen his stuff. He says when youve got a mountain lion in town, its kinda obvious. Rick van de Poll: Yes. About Lions. And I I have this great text history of New Hampshire game and fir bears and I think by Helen Silver who used to work for fish and game and she sort of I kind eyes this animal in one of the quotes from 1892 stating that the catamaran was the most ferocious of all the wild beasts of New Hampshire his great size strength and agility of movement together with his formidable weapons rendered him the terror both of man and beast. 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. They just end up in these places. New Hampshire's Mountain Lions | NH Wildlife It doesn't happen as much anymore. The 17-year-old Kiger mustang mare was born in Bend, Oregon, said Hodskins, who got her . Anyways after three weeks I finally found the image on line on a field and stream photo contest and the explanation in the end was the person that set the camera out with another individual and they believed that someone who knew of the camera location saw the similarities put the can't picture on their SD card so it looked like that camera recorded the image that is. And here we're talking about in this situation we're talking about it migrated from the West. Patrick Tate: Yeah yeah. Fish and Wildlife Service decided all of the cougars, pumas, and mountain lions in the country are actually the same species, and that species hasnt had a breeding population anywhere near the Northeast for at least 70 years. We rely on readers like you to support the local, national, and international coverage on this website. What do you think that. I really really enjoyed listening to this program so thank you all very much. Peter Biello: We got an e-mail question from Robert in Epsom who asks are sightings or encounters with these big cats less dangerous here where they're passing through than out west where those same mountain lines might be establishing territory Rick. So I think the point that I just want to get across is that there is a very strong sense this here in the and not region that there is that there is some sort of mountain lion population how large it is how extensive it is. Is this kind of a typical story. Here it is. And when provoked no animal could stand before him elegantly put. Women control our lives. Maps of Trapping Take by Town 1994 to 2004. The report came in from a conservation officer. Reports without physical evidence are not dismissed, however Fish and Game cannot verify a sighting report without physical evidence. Mountain Lion in New Hampshire? - Bowsite.com Patrick Tate: Okay. They sent it already. Peter Biello: Well Mike thanks very much for sharing your story. Current conditions in New Hampshire would support a mountain lion, according to Tate, as forests have returned, allowing for prey species to become more prevalent. Many people in New Hampshire have claimed to have seen mountain lions. Rick van de Poll: Well the mountain lion of course has been sort of an enigma in the wildlife suite for years and years. So maybe a good pet for you but not for your neighbor if you just stop by unannounced. Want to put this to to Patrick Tate who may have heard some some info or info from listeners like you about these these these cats. He told me that on one of his many scouting trips for Black Bear he found a deer carcass up in a tree. Sam Evans-Brown: What he would have stopped as well I think is way way that the reason that mountain lion kept moving is because he wasn't finding anybody. Peter Biello: So Rick seems like you agree that the tail is a big giveaway whether or not it's a mountain lion Absolutely. Okay. To date most of the pictures that have been sent in have been bobcats and other species Ive received pictures of house cats. NH Fish and Game relies on physical evidence to answer questions about the presence or absence of mountain lion in the state. So I hate the idea that there's some sort of upward you know downward pressure from the bosses saying Don't you know don't tell about the mountain lions because it'll scare away the tourists. Yes. Erler is a senior naturalist at the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center in Holderness. What's interesting about Bobcats is here in the Northeast we have some very large bobcats. Really appreciate it. Peter Biello: This is the exchange on an PR. From: Boomerdog in OK 08-Oct-07 All of that remains unanswered but it is an extremely interesting question. I was a Bobcat we saw it and I have a picture of it. There's no logic for why they'd be listed as an endangered species. I think that you probably are. Caller: It had just left that field and was out. And those are not the same things. It doesn't make much sense because you know mountain lions are as we as we said before. Ask Sam: Why Won't New Hampshire Admit There Are Mountain Lions Here So I reached down to grab the camera and looked back and like a ghost it's gone. There's just one subspecies of North American mountain lion. Yeah 13 to 15 years ago 13 to 15 years ago. And that's this morning at 10:00 here on NH PR. So Marty can you see what I'm getting at is the public sees different names and thinks that they're different animals but it's all the same animal. Tate said that while a mountain lion sighting in New Hampshire isn't likely, it's not impossible. Wildlife biologist breaks down mountain lion sightings in CT | New 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: Same here in New Hampshire too. Peter Biello: Worth mentioning if we're scaring anybody question a mysterious mountain lions lurking perhaps in someone's backyard. OK. The states never denied mountain lions are here, and theyve never admitted mountain lions are here. But you won't find evidence of their existence in paw prints in the snow or a deer carcass in a tree. You know you have to have a license and it's hard to get that license a license to own a mountain lion. They lived perhaps elsewhere in New England and they were just passing through and happened to have an encounter of some sort. There is some information that suggests that it spent a portion of its time in Massachusetts near the Claiborne reservoir. Hunting is legal, but closely regulated by the state. And it came out we could see it had and we could see its long swooping tail. By Eric Orff. Rick van de Poll: Rick van de Poll so I was a non-believer as well. Mountain Lions in New England: Sightings, Science & Bobcat vs Mountain Lion HOLDERNESS, N.H. (AP) Two of the known mountain lions in New Hampshire have spent their 15 years in close proximity to humans. Rick your thoughts. There were several sightings in CT over the last few months. John thanks. Well let me ask maybe Pat and Rick about this. 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. Do we have native species that could have exhibited this type of behavior leaving leaving a deer carcass up in a tree. Peter Biello: Well John thanks very much for the story really appreciate it. N.H. And I just said I saw I saw they from behind the shoulder all the way past the long tail. But my experience was that the majority of these accounts could not be taken lightly. Monday, December 5th: Mountain Lions in New Hampshire? Enable JavaScript by changing your browser options, and then try again. Yes. Thanks very much. Its actually fairly reasonable to believe that mountain lions do, at least, pass through occasionally. And you know it's rather interesting because certainly there are those you as a case of mistaken identity or they wanted to see something that perhaps they actually didn't. Sam Evans-Brown: You know the North America had a number of large predator species when humans first arrived in the continent. 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. I noticed it had a really big sweeping tail that kind of curled up behind it and all but still at that point because everyone says there's no mountain lions here. Patrick Tate: So it's interesting it's brought up. Residents believe cougars still roam New Hampshire's forests. We send out DNA samples to the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station. And then just up behind it you know at about 11 o'clock on one side and whatever that would be on the other side it's black. And Rick Van de Poll naturalist and founder of ecosystem management consultants of New England. There was no sign of it. Patrick Tate: If I could just say one thing. Sam. Like why would you want one wildlife. Which goes back to the Connecticut Connecticut cat and what not. So that did it for me. So there is definitely no downward pressure by anyone. 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. And to anyone listening I would just say you know fishing game who wants proof right. So it's there was no question in my mind. 1957. Well within there. Join as a $8 per month sustainer and get our brand-new owl umbrella! Thanks for calling. Give today. However if if and when it does happen it takes up a lot of resources looking at that situation and identifying what's going on because when you start out you don't know it's a hoax. Verifiable pictures recorded by the observing person or a trail camera. And that the Florida panther was more closely related to the eastern outline than the western mountain lion was. Well let's hear from from Sue Morse again science director for the organization keeping track. There's no attraction. Patrick Tate: So I just got to throw a little interesting side note in this. So let's let's go to the phones. Is that typically what was happening there. Mountain Lions in New Hampshire-Fact or Fiction - YouTube The species that once inhabited the Northeast, known as the eastern mountain lion, is now extinct. Peter Biello: What about the idea of tourism like us leaving aside the fact that it is not on the Endangered Species Act is it. I didn't see him online. Fish and Game then deny the evidence. Mountain lions (especially males) have incredibly large ranges that they defend from rivals. We rely on readers like you to support the local, national, and international coverage on this website. Get your tickets today and one for fifty dollars or six for 150 at NH PR and board. It was really muscular looking cat I mean is that like a side angle to me. Residents believe cougars still roam New Hampshire's forests David Erler says some of them probably have. That's why we always go back to the physical evidence to support what they're reporting. So I will just say this is a big reason why there have not been confirmed sightings I think is that the evidence required first. Don't miss your chance to win three two thousand dollar gas gift cards at any station of your choice not to mention the grand prize twenty five thousand dollars toward a new car. But you've done some reporting on this. BRADFORD, N.H. - All that snow in parts of the Northeast has more than just kids jumping for winter joy. Thanks for a great thanks. Do you get a lot of these these these things that end up being hoaxes. So take care of this problem. So. Well I can't tell you what you saw. Your support makes this news available to everyone. From "History of New Hampshire Game and Furbearers" by Helenette Silver, Research Clerk, NH Fish and Game Dept.