There have been several sightings of mountain lions in New Hampshire recently. Mountain Lion Population (In Each U.S. State) - Wildlife Informer And I have to use that word allegedly because there is so much dispute about what people see and what they actually see. Patrick Tate: And there's one other way to model that is the same animal. Deer Bear Moose Wolves Fisher Mountain Lions. So when we hear mountain lion there's also cougar there's wild cat there's Bobcat which is not a mountain lion maybe Patrick could you sort of spell out the different terms which are synonymous and which are completely different animals. Oh you saw him online. 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. Patrick Tate: I've had hunters hang deer carcasses forbidding wildlife entries. Right. 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. It's bigger but bigger and better world. So I would put this in the category of sort of like shark attacks right. Share. I just don't understand the mechanism for how that would happen. Long before NASA was asked to put a man on the moon one engineer had already figured out how to get there. Seems reasonable! It's you know I recognized their report and. I think that you probably are. 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. Mountain Lions in NH. Peter Biello: Well Mike thanks very much for sharing your story. Sam Evans-Brown: Pretty well I was going to say it is nice to hear about how to identify the facial markings but probably I'd being a to identify the tracks is probably the more useful useful tool that one can have in their tool box. Caller: I have yeah. We we hear that there is allegedly a government conspiracy to deny the existence of mountain lions here in New Hampshire so I guess a local government conspiracy. This is where things start breaking down when you so I get pictures with this great description and one of my favorite stories is a great description what the witness and then so I called the witness and wanted information from them and the person says What are you talking about. Rick van de Poll: Rick van de Poll so I was a non-believer as well. Like why would you want one wildlife. It's not a skinny rope like tail like a housecat. What gets confusing is when you have a large adult animal and a smaller juvenile animal of a different species you can now step start beginning talking about overlapping body weights and sizes. The way that we define species has undergone a revolution with the advent of DNA testing. Have you seen one. Mountain Lions in New Hampshire-Fact or Fiction. You know I think it's there's a lady Holly Ernst out in California who has done a lot of the genotyping of mountain lions in Northern California the ones that are of course most people have heard about taking down hikers bikers etc. Patrick Tate: It became a very interesting investigation over time because it started becoming. Its impossible to say, but I think the odds are pretty good that some of these sightings are legit. Can you look into this picture. Which goes back to the Connecticut Connecticut cat and what not. I tracked cats and all the western states. The DNA the DNA that they were able to pull from the cat suggested that it was a dispersed mountain lion that came. From "History of New Hampshire Game and Furbearers" by Helenette Silver, Research Clerk, NH Fish and Game Dept. And a lot of people around the county airport have seen a lot of pilots coming in said they saw huge. OK. Reports without physical evidence are not dismissed, however Fish and Game cannot verify a sighting report without physical evidence. There was a lot of DNA evidence. Nicholas Handy can be reached at 924-7172 ext. Well within there. No I saw a camel. There have been several sightings of mountain lions in New Hampshire recently. 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. Peter Biello: This is NHK PR Good morning and HP are summer car raffle is back and now's the time to get your early bird tickets. Patrick Tate: Same here in New Hampshire too. 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. Peter Biello: There have been several alleged sightings of mountain lions in New Hampshire recently. Known to exist in the state for over well over a hundred years. Peter Biello: So Rick seems like you agree that the tail is a big giveaway whether or not it's a mountain lion Absolutely. Your support makes this news available to everyone. 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. Patrick Tate: So it's interesting it's brought up. Peter Biello: And then it ran away okay. Monday, December 5th: Mountain Lions in New Hampshire? - WMUR Infinite Scroll Enabled. Peter Biello: Or send us an email exchange at an HP board. Peter Biello: Hmm. And you know all that. 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. Thanks for a great thanks. 1,470 likes. If you believe you have seen a mountain lion and want to report it to NH Fish and Game, please contact the Wildlife Division at (603) 271-2461 or wildlife@wildlife.nh.gov to request an observation report form. Mountain Lions are a mythical creature in New Hampshire with strong feelings on both sides of the question: are there Mountain Lions in New Hampshire? Reviewing the evidence, the U.S. New Hampshire Public Radio | Yeah 13 to 15 years ago 13 to 15 years ago. Mountain Lions in New Hampshire-Fact or Fiction - YouTube Well let's hear from from Sue Morse again science director for the organization keeping track. I just saw the head and the tail that was leaving. 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 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.. Well let me ask maybe Pat and Rick about this. GAP MOUNTAIN LIONS CLUB Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire (USA) District 44-N . Let's look for other evidence. Pat do they typically just move around a lot. We have evidence and as biologists we would find it quite exciting to find that evidence of one in the state. 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. But no proof was offered. They are the same thing. I looked at the picture and asked me what do you see in the picture and I wrote back. I'm Peter Biello. BRADFORD, N.H. - All that snow in parts of the Northeast has more than just kids jumping for winter joy. Peter Biello: When did you allegedly see a mountain lion. N.H. Residents Report Mountain Lion Sighting - NECN Sort of dropped onto the SD card of a camera he'd set up out in the wild. Thanks very much. Thank you very much for that story really appreciate it. Mountain Lion report and as a biologist for the state that's a situation where if he said to me what did I see. The unheralded hero of Apollo John Hubble the man who knew the way to the moon. And Rick van de Poll naturalist and founder of ecosystem management consultants of New England. There wasn't a distinct subspecies the North American mountain lion is all is all one species and then you can find a genetically distinct South American subspecies. You treat it as if it's a sincere situation. 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. Sam Evans-Brown: Certainly that is a thing I've heard but again you have to think of the incentives involved here. Or years or so. Alleged mountain lion sightings put Derry, Windham residents on edge Sam Evans-Brown: So I just had two thoughts which is that we hear a lot of these stories and all of us here have heard these stories. The western mountain lion lives in a more of a grassland open area now so to blend in with a very lighted situation here in the Northeast we are very shadowy dark situation because of the forest and our cats wear a darker brownish reddish color than what they were and they were also smaller than what the western mountain lion is. NHPR is nonprofit and independent. 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. Caller: I do. Patrick Tate: I don't believe it is. So maybe a good pet for you but not for your neighbor if you just stop by unannounced. I've had a number of people call up and say I found a scout in the woods and I want it DNA identified. Support for an age PR comes from you our listeners. Russ, from Sandwich (and Bedford) asks: In Sandwich New Hampshire, everybody has a story about seeing a mountain lion. Through DNA they approximate area in the United States or North America where I was born. New Hampshire Fish and Game Department says there's no proof. It doesn't happen as much anymore. When you talk about a bobcat Bobcat maybe 80 90 pounds and then a mountain lion could be between 130 and 180 pounds. We'd love to have you in the queue. Patrick Tate: So Cougar Mountain Lion katama. Here it is. First off if the standard for an agency to go forward with the public and put out a press release that them outlines here their believers are going to say I told you they'd been here the whole time. 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. Thank you. HOLDERNESS, N.H. (AP) Two of the known mountain lions in New Hampshire have spent their 15 years in close proximity to humans. It's good to talk to you. Every other Friday on Morning Edition NHPRs Sam Evans-Brown tracks down answers to questions about the environment and outdoors for our listeners in a segment we call Ask Sam.. Mountain lions remain an enigmatic animal for residents of New Hampshire, with New Hampshire Fish and Game reporting three to five sightings per week. He said matter of fact I do. Kyle I think about Rick Tate wants to jump in here. Good morning guys. Mike you're on the air. Information online ad an age student loans dawg. And to anyone listening I would just say you know fishing game who wants proof right. Is this kind of a typical story. The species that once inhabited the Northeast, known as the eastern mountain lion, is now extinct. This is not the same as saying that there has never been a mountain lion seen in New Hampshire. As I tried to get a picture of it so there was it was definitely we looked up all the pictures and it was definitely not a bobcat or anything else being it looked just like a mountain lion. Caller: It had just left that field and was out. So let's let's go to the phones. Gap Mountain Lions Club And today we're talking about the mysterious elusive mountain line with folks who know something about it. Deer Bear Moose Grey Wolf Coyote Foxes Fisher Mountain Lion NH Wildlife History. Thank you for visiting the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department website. If youd like to submit a question (or send a mountain line photo) you can record it as a voice memo on your smart phone and send it tooustidein@nhpr.org, OR call our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (1-844-466-8837) and leave a message. m from a weed family Automotive on store Street in Concord is serving the Concord area families automotive needs since 1995. Chapter X, Predators, Panther (Mountain Lion) From History of NH Game and Furbearers by Helenette Silver, Research Clerk, NH Fish and Game Dept. 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. 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. Caller: I cannot recall or see the tail in my in my image of it. The report came in from a conservation officer. And those are not the same things. Fish and Game looked into the labs to have them confirm the information in the reports which the labs did not. Caller: Absolutely. Peter Biello: Well yeah. Monday, December 5th: Mountain Lions in New Hampshire? Part II They were able to do all that by genetics. Windham Life and Times - November 15, 2019 But if you were to get Western dispersing mountain lions just would just sort of expanding into New Hampshire. Well they are the same. Residents believe cougars still roam New Hampshire's forests 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. I would say that there's going to be the truth in here somewhere. Peter Biello: So a little bit of nostalgia maybe for it for a better world embodied in the mountain lion. Thanks for taking my call. And so maybe before I go to you recommend I ask you Patrick Tate is the standard too high. 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. How far were you from this cat. Thanks for calling. Get your tickets today and one for fifty dollars or six for 150 at NH PR and board. We'll push great photos to the front page. So that did it for me. WMUR uLocal: On this trail cam video, an unidentified feline is spotted. There's just one subspecies of North American mountain lion. We had six copies printed out each. The trouble with accepting every reported sighting as a confirmed mountain lion is that there are so many mistaken identifications. So they're not afraid of humans and they'll show up like a regular housecat. So so they're just a very resilient species and they're pretty they're pretty neat. But if you do if you think you're looking at a wild Puma their tail is very thick and especially in the winter is very thick and ponderous looking. Course like Sue said you have to see it and it's not always that visible. I saw the tail end of a literally from behind the shoulder The Long Tail mountain lion crossing the highway going from Password to often Village downtown. I just want to tell you a story that I read. So yeah as far as wildlife species that put deer and trees know there aren't any others that I know of that put deer in trees just just humans might be responsible for that. So what a neat experience. For over 38 years the Saddleback Mountain Lions have offered people a chance to give back to their community. About Lions. We're gonna cue you up and bring into the program listeners in just a moment but I want to ask about the role that Mountain Lions play in the ecosystem we've been talking a lot about mountain lions traveling and being sort of hard to track as they move. He told me that on one of his many scouting trips for Black Bear he found a deer carcass up in a tree. So that that's more or less I think why I'm here and why I got into this in nineteen ninety nine I found a what appeared to be a print of a mountain lion and that was in the Osprey mountains and I thought well OK that's that's a print. 44-N Links. Yes. Since 1917, Lions clubs have offered people the opportunity to give something back to their communities. Peter Biello: From New Hampshire Public Radio I'm Peter Biello in for Lark Knoy and this is the exchange. She was having a garden party on her back porch and everybody in the party saw this mountain lion across the field down below the porch. But you've done some reporting on this. John thanks. Well thanks for sharing. 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. Right. If it's just in the middle of a greenfield you can't prove anything. The current estimate is 2,000 - 2,700 throughout Arizona. Peter Biello: So if they were female mountain lions here they would be more males just because that's what they're looking for. So when we talk about the threshold of evidence required to say for sure you have seen a mountain lion it is rather high. County road and all of a sudden a big cat jumps out of the woods over a stone wall stood in the middle of the dirt road as I rode towards it. Sam Evans-Brown: Well first I want to sort of explain why what the theory is but then also throw a bit of cold water on it because I don't think there's much much logic behind it but essentially is that if fish and game were to acknowledge that there was a population of Mount lions in the state there's a chance that something like a listing under the federal Endangered Species Act might happen and then there'd be you know some they'd have to put a plan in place to protect the species there'd be you know restrictions put on development. Tim Yeah. It's listed as population of least concern. So what I'm getting back is the verifying and confirming of evidence what that was not there. What kind of animal is that. 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. And still the the folks there did weren't able to come up with it with 100 percent certainty what deposited that scat. There are corollaries in other states. It traveled all the way from from you know Minnesota to New York without being so seen Patrick take. 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". I was a Bobcat we saw it and I have a picture of it. John Holt's ideas were at first dismissed but he refused to be silent. I'm sorry go ahead you're on the air. Today she talked with us a little bit before the show about why the mountain line is so compelling and why we want it to be part of our world. These young males are tracking looking for mates and if they don't find a mate they just keep moving and moving and moving. A 140-pound male mountain lion was hit by a car and killed in 2011 in Milford, Connecticut. You could trace that was this same cat from point to point to point. 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. Me Im willing to believe its possible that there are some out there. Patrick Tate: If I could just say one thing. 8 9 2 6 4 7 7. John you're on the air. for some excitement. You're on the air. Yet this young male traveled about 1,800 miles. Residents believe cougars still roam New Hampshire's forests - AP NEWS Have a photo. But my experience was that the majority of these accounts could not be taken lightly. So before we get to the the the the stories of sightings we're getting a lot of calls. You don't know what's going on. However the scarring on the trees did not and the angles were off. The nonbelievers are going to say Show us your evidence and show us prove this to us. Absolutely. Think You Saw A Mountain Lion in N.H.? - New Hampshire Public Radio Patrick Tate: So one thing I'd say is DNA would definitely identify an animal animal's Mark line or not. But are there mountain lions living in New Hampshire? Wildlife biologist breaks down mountain lion sightings in CT | New nh.gov | privacy policy | accessibility policy WMUR NH Chronicle Mountain Lions in NH Part I and Part II. A monthly donation of $5 makes a real difference. So it's there was no question in my mind. (Cue the X-Files music: The Government is denying the cougars exist!) This decision was primarily for nerdy phylogeny reasons, though, because the eastern cougar probably never existed. If you missed part of today's program listen to the exchange. He writes As a farmer I come across many outdoorsman looking to hunt our property had a conversation with one who believed very strongly that we had mountain lions in New Hampshire. Mountain lions (especially males) have incredibly large ranges that they defend from rivals. And I just said I saw I saw they from behind the shoulder all the way past the long tail. There's no attraction. 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 it's six months of a large large predatory animal that moves great distances on the landscape that is not known if it went northeast west Salt and how many circles it did. Email exchange it an HP fraud org or give us a call 1 800 8 9 2 6 4 7 7. There's always been physical evidence to prove those situations like hair or fur scat hair prints pictures of the animal print scat hair. HOLDERNESS, N.H. (AP) Two of the known mountain lions in New Hampshire have spent their 15 years in close proximity to humans. What's going on. Rick van de Poll: 80 90. David Erler says some of them probably have. Less successful males roam further. This is the exchange. Rick shaking his head so Rick now correct me please. Patrick Tate New Hampshire Fish and Game Wildlife Biologist thanks very much for being here this morning really appreciate it. 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 for our scientists to do the lumping and whatnot. The second story window through about 30 feet away from it.