It's one of Maine's most enduring natural mysteries, and federal biologists are digging into decades of witness reports and scientific research that could help solve it. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is formally reviewing the status of the eastern mountain lion to determine if it should stay on the endangered species list. Officially, the large cat with a long tail is believed to be extinct east of the Mississippi River, from Maine to South Carolina. Yet biologists receive at least a dozen reports each year of sightings in southern Maine alone, and rumors abound in other states as well.
"We're willing to listen to the evidence and look at it objectively," said Mark McCollough, a federal biologist based in Old Town who is coordinating the review. Mountain lions, also called cougars or panthers, were eradicated in the eastern United States in the 1800s. Early settlers shot them, nearly wiped out their natural prey (elk, bison and deer) and turned much of their forest habitat into farmland.
They mostly disappeared by 1900. A mountain lion killed on the Maine-Quebec border in 1938 is officially considered the last indisputable proof of the cat's presence here.
Reports of cougar sightings have remained steady over the years. Scott Lindsay, a regional biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife, said he gets 12 or more reports a year of cougars seen from Bethel to Kittery. He suspects many more people believe they've seen a cougar and don't report it to experts who could check it out.
On Monday, coincidentally, Lindsay was checking into a report of a recent cougar sighting in Acton. He had not yet been able to contact the person who saw it or to look for evidence, he said.
Lindsay said he and other biologists take the reports seriously and check out reliable ones by looking for tracks, scat or tufts of hair. They even set up cameras after getting multiple reports in the Hampden area about 10 years ago. Most of the sightings turn out to be smaller cats, such as lynx, bobcats or even house cats, or other animals, such as fishers. "The vast majority of these, for sure, are simply mistakes," Lindsay said. "I'm very skeptical that we could have any wild population here."
That is not to say all of the sightings are mistakes. 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,'Ý" 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.
In 2000, a hunter in Monmouth reported seeing an adult mountain lion and a kitten. State wildlife experts examined tracks in the area and said they belonged to a cat that was too big to be a lynx or bobcat. The sightings in Cape Elizabeth and Monmouth will be among the records reviewed by McCollough and others. Confirmed sightings such as those in Maine do not necessarily mean eastern cougars are residing here, he said. Such sightings are so rare that biologists say those individual cougars could have been captive animals, or pets, that escaped or were released. McCollough said there are an estimated 1,000 captive mountain lions in the eastern U.S., either kept with proper permits or illegally.
A resident population, even a small one, would leave evidence such as carcasses, said Mark Dowling, a director of Cougar Network, a nonprofit research organization based in Massachusetts. Midwestern states still report mountain lions being hit by cars, he said. State biologists in the 21 Eastern states, as well as federal experts, will compile and review sightings records. The U.S. Endangered Species Act requires periodic reviews, and one is long overdue for the eastern cougar, McCollough said.
The review also will focus on scientific research that suggests the eastern mountain lion was, or is, not a separate species at all, but rather genetically the same as the relatively abundant western mountain lion. That finding could be used as an argument to take the eastern mountain lion off the federal endangered list without even settling the question of an eastern population. Although it's clear that state and federal biologists are doubtful that Maine or the other Eastern states have resident cougars, McCollough said the agency is keeping an open mind
Scientists have been surprised before by the arrival of such animals as coyotes or Canada lynx. And biologists acknowledge the Maine woods provide plenty of room to hide and, once again, have an abundance of prey.
said the agency is expected to issue its report later this year. Any recommendation to de-list the lion would lead to a separate review process. Townsend, meanwhile, continues her quiet walks through the woods in Cape Elizabeth. She's never seen a lion again, and she's OK with that.
"I probably will never, and hope I never, see one again," she said.
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