There's no logic for why they'd be listed as an endangered species. Patrick Tate: In theory it's a passing ball of a court and it goes wherever the bottom Ball wants to go. And I was probably about a half a mile from downtown all village on the right. That's why we always go back to the physical evidence to support what they're reporting. Wed love to be part of the first verified sighting. Peter Biello: Rick I believe you did mention that that they do leave carcasses up in the tree from time to time but are there any other species known in New Hampshire to do this on a regular basis. And so far we have not had any positive mark lion scats or any DNA. Patrick Tate: No downward pressure at all I think actually Sean turned up and we found the evidence there a number of people would finally say finally we can put this debate to bed. You saw what you saw. Thank you very much for being here. Peter Biello: Worth mentioning if we're scaring anybody question a mysterious mountain lions lurking perhaps in someone's backyard. There was no sign of it. Sam Evans-Brown: Well this might be a good moment to talk about hoaxes. So let's let's go to the phones. Caller: And then there's the Lily Pond Road and then there's a six foot tall fence. 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. Can we go to the site. Second when I when they did forward it from Wyoming to to Michigan you know this was coming right from sample 18 and 19 had no remarkable differences from known mountain lions from Michigan or Wyoming. 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. Theyve always said when we have verifiable evidence to say a mountain lion has been, is, or was in the state that wed acknowledge that and give that information out, says Pat Tate, the furbearer biologist with New Hampshire Fish and Game, who insists theres no conspiracy. It's completely possible that it may have spent time in New Hampshire and went undetected but had it stayed in the area ultimately it would have been detected over time. And there's there's no evidence of that cat's movement in that entire you know 12 hundred miles stretch of its journey. There's always been physical evidence to prove those situations like hair or fur scat hair prints pictures of the animal print scat hair. We rely on readers like you to support the local, national, and international coverage on this website. There's a lot of photographs that you can see that it's very clearly a tabby cat that someone has thought was a mountain lion. And so maybe before I go to you recommend I ask you Patrick Tate is the standard too high. PublishedNovember 16, 2018 at 6:16 AM EST. Infinite Scroll Enabled. Mountain lions when they show up they leave evidence. But the state always denies it, and none of us know why they deny it. Peter Biello: Well Mike thanks very much for sharing your story. Think you've seen a mountain lion. So so do what you can get to do what you can to get proof. Phone number 1 800. N.H.'s Fish and Game department says there's no proof. And it was you know 10 or 12 people saw it all at once. Sue Morse: First and foremost if you have color or if you could see details of color look at the front of the face around the Pumas muzzle the muzzle itself is pure white. It was some sort of a Lion Mountain Lion animal. From involving members in projects as local as cleaning up an area park or as far-reaching as bringing sight to the world's blind, Lions clubs have always . And those are not the same things. The Connecticut Mountain Lion is the best documented wild Mountain Lion in New England. Peter Biello: This is the exchange on an PR. 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. Patrick Tate: So Cougar Mountain Lion katama. 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. Join as a $8 per month sustainer and get our brand-new owl umbrella! Mountain lions (especially males) have incredibly large ranges that they defend from rivals. And in fact in 2011 when it was announced that the eastern cougar was officially extinct the reason that announcement was made is because they said really that it never existed. On Oct. 10, he gave a slide talk called "Wild Cats of New Hampshire," which included the bobcat and the lynx. It was really muscular looking cat I mean is that like a side angle to me. I mean so what what is the practical change that it would bring to New Hampshire if any. 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! Join as a $8 per month sustainer and get our brand-new owl umbrella! 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. That's the real story is they can't follow up on every one of these sightings. And it came out we could see it had and we could see its long swooping tail. Peter Biello: So a little bit of nostalgia maybe for it for a better world embodied in the mountain lion. Patrick Tate: I don't believe it is. Sam Evans-Brown: You know the North America had a number of large predator species when humans first arrived in the continent. And listeners this has been a lively conversation we're sorry we didn't get to all the the e-mailed comments and the phone calls your stories are appreciated even if we didn't get a chance to hear them today. Despite numerous reports, the NH Fish and Game Department continues to have no physical evidence of mountain lion presence in the state. I would say that there's going to be the truth in here somewhere. So you know until I found those two scats I didn't think that mountain lions were here in the east. 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. Peter Biello: Today on the program Patrick Tate New Hampshire Fish and Game Wildlife biologist and far better project leader Sam Evans Brown host of an HP podcast outside in which is about the natural world and how we use it. Are there other powers that be worried that scary mountain lions will scare off people from camping in New Hampshire. 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. 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. Peter Biello: Let's talk to Ron and where Ron thanks very much for calling. Long before NASA was asked to put a man on the moon one engineer had already figured out how to get there. 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. Peter Biello: Well Karl Jarvis a former reporter for The King's son Nile thank you very much for for calling in and sharing your perspective and to his point Patrick T. I mean yes we haven't met the scientific burden of proof here in New Hampshire as far as physical evidence is is concerned but is there room at Fish and Game For A kind of an informal nod to all of the people who have somehow convinced themselves and possibly some others that yeah there may be occasional sightings here. And it's not really strong. When they were landing or taking off and it seems like it's been there for like. 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. DNA from scat or from fur, a clear track that is confirmed by an expert, or a photo that clearly shows a mountain lion. The best documentation we have in New Hampshire suggests there hasnt been a mountain lion killed by a hunter in this state since 1885. Really appreciate it. They absolutely do. But I was riding a mountain bike not far from my house. www.wildlife.state.nh.us, Buy or Renew Your Saltwater Fishing License, Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. 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. So so it is possible in Maine to still to to to have one but you have to be sort of professional handler as it were. for some excitement. So hey, just me shooting from the hip, maybe there are a couple mountain lions skulking about. Rick van de Poll: Oh yeah absolutely. 10 things to do in NH this weekend: Dartmouth Dance, Hamilton De Holanda & more, Turkish restaurant in the Upper Valley aims to help those affected by recent earthquakes, RFK Jr. tells NH crowd hes considering a presidential run, Epping woman pleads guilty to threatening Michigan election official in 2020. 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. So we're fixated on natural but there's other possibilities. The book MAMMAL TRACKS & SIGN by Mark Elbroch has pictures of mountain lion scat found at a multiple beaver kill. Sam Evans-Brown: So Tim so this cat's been been referenced a couple of times I think we should talk about it specifically lay the whole story out for folks who haven't heard the story because it's actually I think really indicative of a lot of stuff for talking about. Peter Biello: And that will make identification for a layperson rather difficult. 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. 235 or nhandy@ledgertranscript.com. Thanks very much. Are there Mountain Lions in NH? 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. Have it reported down in the Keene area. 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. Tim Yeah. Well within there. 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. Well I can't tell you what you saw. He studied Politics and Spanish at Bates College, and before reporting was variously employed as a Spanish teacher, farmer, bicycle mechanic, ski coach, research assistant, a wilderness trip leader and a technical supporter. Good morning guys. 44-N Links. People were calling the New Hampshire Fish and Game director's office saying why are you dragging your feet on this. And boy it was big it had to be at least 200 pounds the thing was you and and it just made a little bit of noise and it was gone. I actually been interviewed a couple of times by reporters and with all due respect for the media you know facts aren't always communicated correctly. Incredible sighting and I called him the fish and game and they immediately sent me to a website to look at all the bobcat pictures. We'll hear from her periodically through the show. Ive received pictures of dogs at odd angles, says Tate. So try to take photographs if you see something like this. So so. 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. Peter Biello: Listeners give us a call if you have a question or a story of a sighting 1 800 8 9 2 6 4 7 7. I just want to tell you a story that I read. Less successful males roam further. 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. So nowadays we think of this in the Northeast as crazy stuff that people have a mountain lion as a pet. Fish and Game looked into the labs to have them confirm the information in the reports which the labs did not. The brother and sister big cats have lived . Peter Biello: Wow. Caller: Hi. Monday, December 5th: Mountain Lions in New Hampshire? No evidence and other states where Mountain lights have turned up. Email exchange it an HP fraud org or give us a call 1 800 8 9 2 6 4 7 7. 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. I don't know if she still is. Mike Guyton pressure was almost Greyhound like very muscular large back legs on it and the coloration on it was almost an orange brownish orange color and so I stop and I look at this thing in the field and as the animal looks at me the face was very chiseled definitely not a bobcat. I have one that's more elaborate than that. Sam Evans-Brown has been working for New Hampshire Public Radio since 2010, when he began as a freelancer. And maybe it's a no holds barred nostalgia for a better world a wild or Fuller world not a world that's constrained by our boundaries and our taxes and our highways. Really appreciate it. They're very loyal to what the handler which makes them very dangerous to everyone else. "Of those three to five reports,. So it's there was no question in my mind. Mountain Lion | Squam Lakes Natural Science Center All exhibit and hiking trails are CLOSED for the season. A monthly donation of $5 makes a real difference. I had a resident in New Hampshire tell me a story of a mountain lion in the 1960s where a person who would come summer in New Hampshire and then live in a different part of the country in the winter had a trailer that was housing his mount line. Mike thanks for your call. 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. They sent he sent his scent those two samples with his to Wyoming an unfortunate Fish and Game Commission there did not get a positive read on it but send it back to Central Michigan University where they did a nuclear micro satellite DNA analysis and found no significant difference between that scat and other scats that were tested from the Rocky Mountain region. So give us a call now. No that's a little bit outside the range. Have you heard stories do you have questions about the mountain line. Fish and Game then deny the evidence. So so they're just a very resilient species and they're pretty they're pretty neat. Is there a way we can learn more about these dispersing mountain lions that may travel through the Granite State and that I would ask you certainly part about whether or not a he's spending too much time chasing down these kind of false leads or B would rather be doing something else that is more informative to whether or not we actually have or can prove that we have dispersing mountain lions in the state. And they were using all the habitat. Sam Evans-Brown: But I mean the video I had been sent was you know a recording of a animal growling but it was in slow motion and when I asked the person why is this in slow motion the denied that it was so there's a lot of weird stuff that happens in regards to people claiming they've seen they've seen these things. Caller: It had to be a mountain lion convinced I was about 30. WMUR NH Chronicle Mountain Lions in NH Part I and Part II. NHPR is nonprofit and independent. Mountain lions ( Puma concolor) are one of the six native species of wild cats in North America. Okay. Yeah 13 to 15 years ago 13 to 15 years ago. And the second question is this a behavior mountain lions exhibit. So take care of this problem. Peter Biello: From New Hampshire Public Radio I'm Peter Biello in for Lark Knoy and this is the exchange. It's not an emerging endangered species no work no there are there are populations in specific states so the Florida panther is is an endangered species that sub population is in fact listed under the Endangered Species Act. From: Boomerdog in OK 08-Oct-07 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. Peter Biello: Mm hmm. A lot of times. We'll push great photos to the front page. The great thing about pictures isn't the animal itself it's the background. The big cat has been extinct here since the mid-1800s. We are the second most-forested state in the country, and those forests can be impenetrable snarls (part of why the Northeast is notoriously a difficult place to hunt deer), and while there are people in a lot of those woods, because the cats have been absent for a few generations now, most of those people dont know what a cougar scrape or latrine look and smell like. Get your tickets today and one for fifty dollars or six for 150 at NH PR and board. Seems reasonable! Peter Biello: Yeah well what do you think Pat is. Here it is. Caller: And the more I thought about it the color of it it was definitely not a bobcat. John. 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. There's never, ever, ever, ever been a documented case of a black mountain lion. Reports without physical evidence are not dismissed, however Fish and Game cannot verify a sighting report without physical evidence. Thank you for visiting the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department website. Well just that I have evidence and it was not it was denied by fishing game at the time and I you know there's I don't need to prove to anybody that I saw one just like some of your callers said okay. Deer Bear Moose Grey Wolf Coyote Foxes Fisher Mountain Lion NH Wildlife History. 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.. And still the the folks there did weren't able to come up with it with 100 percent certainty what deposited that scat. Sort of dropped onto the SD card of a camera he'd set up out in the wild. Support for an age PR comes from you our listeners. I really really enjoyed listening to this program so thank you all very much. And to anyone listening I would just say you know fishing game who wants proof right. The number 1 800 8 9 2 6 4 7 7 so promised a discussion about conspiracy theories. Sue Morse: The big cat really commands the utmost respect not so much fear but fascination. NH Fish and Game relies on physical evidence to answer questions about the presence or absence of mountain lion in the state. It is also known as cougar, panther, mountain lion, and puma, though catamount is the preferred regional vernacular. Patrick Tate: So I agree with what Sam said in part that their ability to go undetected for amount of time but ultimately it was detected. It was not a bobcat. So what counts as verifiable evidence? But Absence of Evidence Is Not Evidence of Absence, Right? So one thing I'll add. And here we're talking about in this situation we're talking about it migrated from the West. Well let me ask maybe Pat and Rick about this. Patrick Tate: I've from all the situations I've read and learned about wildlife. I mean there was this one lady I remember and tough tomorrow. We want answers. Part II. And when provoked no animal could stand before him elegantly put. It all used to be based on measurable physical traits color, skull size, paw size, etc but now its based on whether an animal can be shown to be genetically distinct from others. I hope she's listening and she had spoke to a lot of different people ended up having a couple of sightings of her alone without sort of by accident. Well let's talk a little bit about that. Peter Biello: We mentioned that the eastern cougar and the Western cougar are they were separate eastern cougar believed to be extinct. Patrick Tate: So the individuals can say that but for an agency that's based on science and what not to to go off with no evidence and then get into that giant debate and all these other issues and put credibility at risk I don't think that would be a great path to take. Mike you're on the air. 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. And we want to know your stories if you have them 1 800 8 9 2 6 4 7 7 or email exchange at an HP bar dot org we'll talk about conspiracy theories when we come back. Pelosi story here we go. It's bigger but bigger and better world. So they're scary. Patrick Tate: Well. So you want identifiable backgrounds. Deer Bear Moose Wolves Fisher Mountain Lions. So and so they so they do get pretty involved. Theres a project called the Cougar Network that tracks verified sightings, and they are all around us: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New York and New Brunswick have all had verified sightings over the past 20 years or so. I've had a number of people call up and say I found a scout in the woods and I want it DNA identified. Peter Biello: Ok weird question but do they make good pets. It's not a skinny rope like tail like a housecat. Rick van de Poll: Well a report that you know as John Harrigan up north has in co-ops County for about 15 years I kept track of reports and people would call me and tell me where they saw the mountain lion they thought they saw it and it varied right from you know downtown villages all the way to remote highlands of the North Country and and everywhere in between. There's these animals aren't coming with a map saying oh I want to go here. And it was unmistakable. BRADFORD, N.H. - All that snow in parts of the Northeast has more than just kids jumping for winter joy. But before I go any further I want to say we do not have sufficient game. Ecosystem Management Consultants of New England, Ask Sam, and recently fielded question about mountain lions, 10 things to do in NH this weekend: Dartmouth Dance, Hamilton De Holanda & more, Turkish restaurant in the Upper Valley aims to help those affected by recent earthquakes, RFK Jr. tells NH crowd hes considering a presidential run, Epping woman pleads guilty to threatening Michigan election official in 2020, We also hear excerpts from an interview with, Read about the most recent cougar "sightings". Patrick Tate: Okay. If you go on YouTube and search mount lion Pat you can see people patent their hundred pound kiddie like its regular mascot cat. It's unfortunate that that kind of thing happens as often as it does. Lots of people have stories about them, people have them on their game cameras I mean its kind of a thing. 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. Well let's hear from from Sue Morse again science director for the organization keeping track. And they used to be this whole list of the different subspecies of mountain lion and it has since been reduced to just to the North American and the South American. Mountain lions leave a lot of sign. Mountain lion or cat running across. Peter Biello: Well John thanks very much for the story really appreciate it. 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.