Part 3 "Coming Soon" Sue Morse Presentation at Pittsfield IP: 50.204.144.106 Posted on February 16, 2016 at 06:38:40 PM by weather01089
Some information she provided is not supported by science. Sue needs to double check her facts about NA cougar subspecies; one small group of pumas in the Northwest apparently survived the great Mega fauna extinction and are not descended from South American types. The public safety aspect was downplayed. Mountain lions are predators and take livestock and hobby animals. Losses in some areas are high but states generally compensate owners for this. They also pose a threat to pets and people, especially children, but not much of one. The risk may be slim but agencies in New England will still have to deal with it. It may take a while before New Englanders become accustomed to having mountain lions casually strolling across their front lawns every now and then. Concerns about pets and children will make safety in “cougar country” an issue in the Northeast.
Most of the audience attended “Coming Soon” expecting to hear cutting edge stuff about catamounts re-colonizing the region, where they came from, how many are here and what they are up to. Instead they got an hour on a variety of wildlife. Her animals calls of coyotes and other critters were authentic but she added no WAV flies of pumas caterwauling or chirping so patrons could be familiar with cougar vocalizations as well. The photos of moose, deer and other critters may have been her own but the decision to use her own creations limited her ability to graphically show deer kills, caching in trees and other things. Many photos available from state and federal agencies are free for the taking. None were included, including stuff from Milford, Matunuck or the Quabbin.
A photo of a female cougar recently discovered in Tennessee was part of the introduction. Two other cougars (males) have also been confirmed. This is proof of dispersal of females lions to Mid-America from elsewhere. If she mates with one of the males, and produces kittens, it will be a major event. But what does this have to do with eastern cougars except to direct the attention of the audience away from local mountain lion issues? Why bring up discoveries in another part of the nation that is far away unless it directly effects NE in some manner? Florida panthers took up a portion of this program. Panthers may be of general interest to someone attending a program on cougars but, again, this is beyond the scope of the eastern cougar debate. Despite the small number of animals surviving in Florida the notion that panthers might someday inhabit the Northeast was floated. This theory is certainly a novel one not shared by many in the scientific community. With only a few hundred individuals-maybe less- the long term survival of the Florida Panther population is still very much in doubt. If they did persist and increase in number, northern expansion is possible. It might take another 100 years before one might make it’s way north to Connecticut. By that time, cougars from many other locations like Michigan, which has a bunch of cougars now, would have arrived on the scene, established home ranges and bred. And that’s in addition to the cats that are here already. Mountain lions would probably be as common in New England as they are out West so any Florida Panther dispersing north would be stumbling upon a region where mountain lions are numerous and other members of their species occupy the most desirable home ranges. Recruits do succeed in similar instances in NA but a young panther might have trouble competing with older, larger residents for both prey and territory. Ontario and Quebec pumas heading south, on the other hand, are of greater interest to puma advocates in the Northeast. Their dispersal has a direct impact on local populations in NE whose origins have not been identified. Morse said little about this.
Black Hills dispersals and the controversy about increased hunting quotas received much attention but she never described SD population saturation levels while talking about the number of dispersers being killed on roads in the region. That’s the underlying cause. Because of higher hunting quotas and increased mortality, a larger number of vacant home ranges are available for young cougars to occupy. This opportunity means fewer dispersers are departing the region and consequently fewer of them are being struck by vehicles on South Dakota highways. A reduction in the number of dispersers leaving the Black Hills may diminish the already infinitesimally small chances than one might make it to New England in the next century.... or three, but since dispersers from the four eastern Canadian provinces are 1800 miles closer to us, what difference does it make if SD GFP increases hunting quotas? How can this change possibly effect the persistence of mountain lions populations in Maine, for example, if northern NE states are getting recruits from Nova Scotia or Quebec, not South Dakota. It’s hard to imagine why anyone would still believe the Black Hills are the primary source of mountain lions in the East given the fact that the South Dakota is more than 2,000 miles away but it appears Morse is one of them. A journey of that distance would take almost two years to complete and require a young lion to swim dozens of major rivers, including the Mississippi and Missouri and cross at least six interstate highways along with uncountable numbers of secondary roads. I suspect anyone who takes a closer look at the evidence will come away with a different opinion about where our mountain lions are coming from.