Cougar: "Ghost of the Maine woods"

The Bangor Daily News has published an excellent and extensive article about cougar sightings in Maine.

Despite hundreds of sightings, cougar’s status remains in doubt
12/3/10 04:50 pm Updated: 12/5/10 06:57 am
By Kevin Miller, BDN Staff

Roddy Glover said he will never forget the day a decade ago he came face to face with the fabled ghost of the Maine woods, a predator that according to virtually all scientific accounts no longer existed in New England.

It was mid-September 2000 and Glover, then 39, was scouting out some easily accessible spots along railroad tracks in Monmouth where, with an injured foot, he could more easily bowhunt for deer.

Standing on an embankment above the tracks, Glover saw a large, tawny-colored animal strolling toward him in the mud beside the railroad ties, he said.

“I thought, ‘That looks weird. It doesn’t look familiar,’” Glover, a lifelong hunter as well as a taxidermist, recalled recently. “It was friggin’ huge.”

But when the animal turned sideways, revealing its characteristically long tail, Glover said he realized with a shock what was headed his way: a mother mountain lion with its good-sized offspring in tow.

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” he said. “I just laid down … because I couldn’t run because of my foot. They started coming closer and closer, and they got within 50 yards of me when they turned and went into the woods.”

A biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife later would say in media reports that the tracks he documented at the scene were “the most solid piece of cougar evidence we’ve ever had.”

In the decade since, DIF&W has received scores of reports — and even some grainy photos — from people throughout Maine convinced they spotted a mountain lion crossing a road, stalking prey in a field or lounging in the sunny backyard like a gigantic house cat.

Reports of mountain lions — including one sighting near Greenville last month — have come in from all around the state in recent years. But officially at least, self-sustaining populations of wild cougars or mountain lions exist only in Maine’s history books.

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Read full Bangor Daily News article here (this excerpt is only the tip of the iceberg!):
http://tinyurl.com/2b2zfah

Maine's "ghost of the forest" reappears

The press has been having a field day with a resurgence of interest in the increasing rumors of the Eastern Cougar's return to Maine. Even the Portland Press Herald has gotten in on the action, with an article on March 24th that followed up on the prior article run on March 13th.

Here's an excerpt from the March 24th article, which gives an idea of the response:

Since we ran a story last week about a federal status review of the eastern cougar, reports of sightings have flowed in over the phone, the Internet and even in a handwritten letter (talk about your endangered species).

Mountain lions, or what looked like them, were reportedly seen in Standish, Windham, Raymond, Scarborough, New Gloucester, Brunswick, Freeport and lots of other places.

Reports also have been posted on the federal eastern cougar Web site by Mainers and residents of other eastern states where the “ghost cat” also has a healthy following. You can read them, or post your own, here.
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And here's an excerpt from the prior article (March 13), which details a great sighting just a handful of miles from Portland:

A couple of Maine sightings -- one in Cape Elizabeth and one in Monmouth -- are considered the state's most credible cougar encounters. Rosemary Townsend is as sure about what she saw today as she was on that March day in 1995. She saw the cat while walking down a gravel road in a large wooded area near Ram Island Farm in Cape Elizabeth.

"I thought it was a dog originally. Then when I looked at the face I thought, 'Oh my gosh, that's a mountain lion," she said Monday.

The cat was drinking water out of a small pond about 25 yards from her. It lifted its head and looked right at her, Townsend said. She saw its long "bottle-brush tail," a feature that distinguishes lions from lynx or bobcats. Townsend slowly turned around and walked back up the road. "I lost sight of him as I walked away from him, and I didn't go back and look," she said.

Friends convinced her to report the sighting, and biologists checked the area around the pond. They found tracks and hair, which they sent to Oregon for testing, she said. The hair was found to be consistent with mountain lion hair, although officials say no DNA tests -- the most definitive -- were conducted.
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