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. 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. NHPR is nonprofit and independent. So try to take photographs if you see something like this. Its actually fairly reasonable to believe that mountain lions do, at least, pass through occasionally. Caller: Well I think Patrick I recognized your name. 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. How to Report a Possible Mountain Lion Sighting. Select image for larger view. Well let me ask maybe Pat and Rick about this. 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. There's always been physical evidence to prove those situations like hair or fur scat hair prints pictures of the animal print scat hair. Mountain lions can be found throughout Arizona, and data suggests the populations are not only stable, but growing. 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. Patrick Tate: It's wow interesting that you brought this up because I've had people report I saw cardamom. 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. Absolutely. Lions Clubs Int'l Links: LionNet NH Links 2011 -2012 . Sam Evans-Brown: One in fact Helena silver in that sort of tome that Rick van de Poll read from at the beginning is she. Thank you very much for listening. 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. And to anyone listening I would just say you know fishing game who wants proof right. So so they're just a very resilient species and they're pretty they're pretty neat. Caller: Oh hi. Peter Biello: And Carl before you continue I think Patrick Tate just give me a second. Pat humans people leave deer carcasses up in trees. Rick van de Poll: Well I didn't. We're going to talk a little bit more about habitat first but then we'll get into sightings. 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. If it's someone that has an illegal captive animal that is accustomed to humans those leave a lot of evidence because they want to go around humans to find food meaning they're used to being fed by humans. Wed love to be part of the first verified sighting. Thanks for taking my call. Mountain lions don't usually travel more than 100 miles from where they are born. So I don't understand really how how this this idea came to be but it is the main reason why folks believe that fishing game is is covering up the fact that there are mountain lions in the state again with no evidence. And it came out we could see it had and we could see its long swooping tail. I live pretty much on the town line of Greenfield just a couple of miles down in the Greenfield. Deer Bear Moose Grey Wolf Coyote Foxes Fisher Mountain Lion NH Wildlife History. So we tossed these terms around but really the term subspecies has been sort of redefined in our lifetimes. Reviewing the evidence, the U.S. But Absence of Evidence Is Not Evidence of Absence, Right? Let's talk to Mike in Webster. So I would put this in the category of sort of like shark attacks right. 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. And now that everyone and their mother has a remote camera in their back yard its just so, so unlikely that there are resident, breeding mountain lions in New England that are living invisibly among us, he says, Its become Big Foot.. And Rick van de Poll naturalist and founder of ecosystem management consultants of New England. When they were landing or taking off and it seems like it's been there for like. 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. Patrick Tate: I've from all the situations I've read and learned about wildlife. There are corollaries in other states. I'm Peter Biello in for Laura NOI. Infinite Scroll Enabled. People go through great lengths to create hoaxes like this. Sam Evans-Brown: You know the North America had a number of large predator species when humans first arrived in the continent. The supervisor that hired me in the game division in October of 1978 passed on to me this whole big folder of mountain lion information and sightings going back probably a couple decades. SUE Morse naturalist and science director for the organization keeping track. So. A monthly donation of $5 makes a real difference. 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. He told me that on one of his many scouting trips for Black Bear he found a deer carcass up in a tree. Not one picture of him online while the person meet with us. Thanks for your call. Peter Biello: Ok. From came from out west they tracked it all the way back to the Black Hills in the Dakotas. Get your tickets today and one for fifty dollars or six for 150 at NH PR and board. They're very loyal to what the handler which makes them very dangerous to everyone else. He said matter of fact I do. 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. There have been several sightings of mountain lions in New Hampshire recently. Can you look into this picture. 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. But my experience was that the majority of these accounts could not be taken lightly. Sam what's the incentive for the government to deny allegedly. Peter Biello: Well yeah. People have asked me about the genetics of eastern mountain lion. 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. 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. So Michael follows with the question. You know you have to have a license and it's hard to get that license a license to own a mountain lion. And I think a lot of folks would like them to be around. You can see two of them at Squam Lakes Natural Science Center in Holderness NH. Thank you. Tonight, Sean McDonald investigates,. Yeah 13 to 15 years ago 13 to 15 years ago. I just saw the head and the tail that was leaving. Peter Biello: Mm hmm. 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. 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. Are there other powers that be worried that scary mountain lions will scare off people from camping in New Hampshire. and territorial animals are much more inclined to create a problem with passer bys than dispersing animals in fact I'd be totally shocked if a dispersal would encounter with a human purposefully unless they had already had some type of training to do so. NH Fish and Game Wildlife Biologist Patrick Tate reports that so far, mountain lion reports accompanied byphotographs have been misidentified bobcats or housecats, or pictures of mountain lions taken from the Internet and reported as being recorded in New Hampshire. 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. 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. I mean they're a survivor. Good morning guys. There was a lot of DNA evidence. Patrick Tate: Well. Do you want to see real, living mountain lions that do exist in New Hampshire. Because I mean as we've heard in the past 10 minutes like there's there's some disagreement or at least some some vagueness about what an actual mountain lion should appear like in the wild assuming we can even get close enough. You don't know what's going on. She is renowned for tracking. Had great trees behind it beautiful ferns on the ground so it brought me down on the site and the ferns on the ground matched. Peter Biello: Thank you for sharing that. And as the biologist who's gonna stand on this and if I'm going to say this is a proven picture I need to be able to stand on it so soundly and have the evidence so I going to go through it with a fine tooth comb kept picking pieces apart trying to answer these pieces. Is there something particularly hospitable about New Hampshire Forests that make them want to come here. The panther, Fells concolor, is a beast of many names, most frequently referred to in New Hampshire history as catamount, but sometimes known locally as "Indian Devil" or "Carcajou", under which . I would just suggest that in my experience as a reporter covering this covering this issue for a few years at least at what point do we reach a certain critical mass for lack of a better term of accounts where I'm not to suggest that you guys aren't taking this possibility seriously. These were normal everyday folks. Yes. And they asked me about the tail which I just did not remember that tail out of that whole experience. Peter Biello: This is the exchange on an HP yard today we're talking about the mysterious elusive majestic Mystic Mountain Lion. 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. And it was unmistakable. That's too big for Bobcat. Our guests today Patrick Tate New Hampshire Fish and Game Wildlife biologist Sam Evans Brown host of an HP podcast outside in. And still the the folks there did weren't able to come up with it with 100 percent certainty what deposited that scat. We've met Fish and Game's BURDEN OF PROOF. The number 1 800 8 9 2 6 4 7 7 so promised a discussion about conspiracy theories. Can we go to the site. And it's not really strong. This is the exchange. Right. 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. Mountain lions when they show up they leave evidence. Russ, from Sandwich (and Bedford) asks: In Sandwich New Hampshire, everybody has a story about seeing a mountain lion. 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.