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Mountain Lion Spotted in NH! Photo Taken with Game Camera
My daughter's friends are hunters from the Peterborough NH area and this past weekend shared this photo they captured of a large Mountain Lion in one of there tree stand cameras.
The photo was taken near the Peterborough/Dublin NH line. This proves now that there are Mountain Lions in New England and by the size of this cat it has be
been eating "large".
Big Foot Sighting at Rock Gap ( with Picture)
The presence of cougars in the East
has NEVER been doubted.
What has also NEVER been found is one iota of evidence of a breeding colony of wild, indigenous cougars east of the Mississippi and north of Florida.
No matter how reliable is the data of having seen a cougar in the area, that data is as meaningful as the sighting of a tiger roaming free in Ohio last week. A cougar found in the Appalachians is almost certainly a released "pet" or a midwest cougar that has wandered far from any potential mates.
Can wild cougars travel that far without detection? Absolutely. When they get there, will they have any mates to breed with, and continue their presence for more than a few years? Absolutely not.
Always remember these two facts:
1) a breeding colony of thirty cougars in Florida was NOT large enough to sustain their survival for more than a couple decades. Thus, any colony no larger than that will die out in fifty years at most.
2) the Florida colony left an immeasurable amount of evidence of their presence, decade after decade.
The idea that there is a colony in the east (1) larger than the Florida one that has (2) completely escaped detection for more than a century is utterly absurd.
This is why this group
http://www.easterncougar.org/pages/beyondsightings.htm
which would be THRILLED to confirm a presence of such a colony -- indeed, that is what they are advocating and educating for -- makes the following statement:
Are cougars now recovering in the East?
Not yet. Despite more sophisticated technology for finding cougars, and with more people looking than ever before, less evidence has appeared in the last decade than in the 1990s (perhaps because of recent strict legislation prohibiting interstate trade in exotic cats and new state laws prohibiting private ownership of such cats).
Sanctioned studies since the late 1990s by the CRF, research universities, and state and federal wildlife agencies in NY, NJ, PA, MD, VA, WV, and KY have failed to find evidence of cougars. Incidental evidence such as roadkills, accidental shootings or trappings, and photographs captured by privately owned remote wildlife cameras is nearly absent.
Even in Midwestern states with low or emerging cougar populations, incidental evidence appears with reliable frequency.
I am thrilled with the prospect that I will most likely live to see the day when colonies of wild cougars return to their natural habitat in the east. However, I see no evidence that this has yet occurred.