Article Title: Local Catamount Sightings Reported

Edition: November 2000
Category: Outdoors/Natural History
Author: Nat Frothingham and Jake Brown
Article:

A pair of reported sightings this past summer near the Wrightsville Reservoir about a mile north of the Montpelier line has once again raised serious questions about whether mountain lions, or catamounts, long believed to be extinct in Vermont, are somehow staging a comeback.

At the same time two well-known Vermont wildlife experts are saying they all but certainfor whatever reasonthat big cats back.

In a phone interview, state wildlife biologist Cedric Alexander, said "Yes" he thought that catamonts were in Vermont and Susan Morse, a nationally known tracker and habitat specialist, said she believes some of the recent sightings are "credible".

Locally, Putnamville resident and Vermont-registered hunting and fishing guide Jim Paige is convinced that the catamount is here in central Vermont.

Paige has 30 years experience in the outdoors, and spends about 200 days in the woods in a typical year.

Paige was contacted this past summer and told of two separate sightings.

In July, a group of people riding mountain bikes along Route 12 reported seeing a catamount cross the road near the bridge just yards north of the Wrightsville Beach Reacreation Area turnoff.

"They said they saw the animal cross the road and walk down into the delta area to the east of Route 12," Paige said. "They watched it walk around down there."

A few weeks later a man was taking an early morning walk on a nature trail that runs through the Wrightsville Beach area behind the outhouses. He reported suddenly encountering what he said was a catamount on top of a small rise. Paige got the impression the sighting ocurred about 100 yards from the public beach.

Paige says the astonished man "just backed off."

Paige, who has lived in Vermont for 17 years, claims two personal sightings of the elusive cat himself-- one in 1985 and one in 1998.

Paige has a particularly vivid memory of what he says is his most recent catamount sighting in 1998. He was three miles north of Worcester village on Route 12 when he saw an animal he believes was a catamount cross the road in front of his vehicle. After crossing the road, Paige said, the animal bounded up a rock ledge and perched there for 12 to 15 seconds.

Paige grabbed the 8-power binoculars that he always carries with him in his sports utility vehicle.

"I got a very good look at that animal for 10 or 15 seconds," he said. "It was really only 30 yards away. I could see the whiskers on its face. It was that close." Peering through his binoculars, Paige saw an animal with a tawny-colored head, rounded ears and a three-foot tail that was three inches in diameter. He estimated its weight at 100-120 pounds. Then Paige noticed something else -- the cat was wearing a radio telemetry collar.

After the animal disappeared into the woods, Paige drove straight to Somer's Hardware in Montpelier, bought some plaster of Paris and drove back to the spot where he believes he saw the catamount and took a plaster cast of its footprint.

In addition to these two sightings, Paige said he has also seen catamount tracks in the snow following deer.

When Paige reported his first sighting in 1985 to the Department of Fish and Wildlife, he said they were skeptical. They suggested he might have seen a deer.

"I know the difference between a deer and a cat," he said reprovingly.

Today Paige detects a change of attitude at Fish and Wildlife. "Back in the mid-80's," he said, "they were denying they were here. But I think now," Paige says, "they know they are here."

Vermont Fish & Wildlife biologist Kim Royar said that the state receives between 25-50 reports of catamount sightings each year. She said that Fish & Wildlife has not yet had proof positive that catamounts have returned. But she also said, "I'm never going to say 'never' anymore."

Where are they coming from?
No one interviewed is alleging that the catamount in Vermont is making comeback from a remnant, native population. Instead, experts see human intervention at work.

Some say the catamounts Vermonters say they are seeing are released pets. Others, like Jim Paige suggest that people are trapping mountain lions in the West, transporting them here and letting them go. "I personally believe there are breeding pairs in the state," he said.

Stressing that his remarks were purely theoretical and without proof, Fish & Wildlife's Cedric Alexander suggested that organized groups involved in animal reintroduction efforts could be capturing these animals elswhere and releasing them here.

Kristin DeBoer, a wolf specialist at the Massachusetts-based organization RESTORE: The North Woods, when asked whether that group was reintroducing catamounts said: "That's laughable. That's not worth commenting on."

She noted it is illegal to capture endangered species. She went on to say that while RESTORE's primary goal is to reintroduce the wolf in northern New England, her group is interested in doing similar work with mountain lions in the future. She said that wolves and mountain lions would deserve government protection whether they are native or reintroduced.

Habitat and Range Paige
Paige is not surprised that catamounts are surviving here. After all, he says, they have everything they need in this part of the state: an exploding population of deer to feed on and lots of pretty lonely countryside.

Paige says that if you go up Route 12 past Worcester in the direction of Lake Elmore Putnam State Forest is to your west. He's tramped this wilderness himself and said, "You better bring a compass with you," You're likely to see a lot of black bear, a lot of moose. "And when you see that kind of thing, you're away from people. "

Paige's musings about the return of the catamount are filled with the same sort of suppressed excitement that tracker and habitat specialist Susan Morse expressed as she talked about some of the big wildlife comeback stories in the Northeast that have occurred over long periods of time.

Morse explained that wildlife are "incredibly resourceful and very forgiving." She said that in 1900 there were some 2,000 moose in the Northeast. Now, said Morse, there are 50,000 moose throughout New England and northern New York State.

The same comeback story, she said, applies to the wild turkey in Vermont. "I can remember when there were no turkeys," she said. But now the turkey is everywhere.

Turning to the thought of the possible emergence of the mountain lion as a viable wildlife population in Vermont, Morse noted that deer are "back in a big way, perhaps in too much of a big way." She said that excessive numbers of hungry deer in the Champlain Valley are stripping out the forest understory and damaging habitats.

Faced with an overabundance of deer the return of the catamount could be a very good thing, she said, "The gain (could be) that we have a natural predator in the northern forest that is keeping the prey base in balance with its habitat."

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