Re(7): Two More RECORDER articles from recent weeks IP: 68.172.220.212 Posted on February 5, 2015 at 01:01:54 PM by Chris
Weather,
A short hop from eastern Canada, indeed, except that his individual DNA and its Black Hills' markers had already been matched from locations in MN and WI prior to his appearance in CT.
The confirmation game may be a joke, but how else does one expect to show the agencies that cougars are in New England except by collecting evidence independently and having if confirmed via peer-review?
Rest assured, I've spent plenty of time speaking to good folks at hill-town lunch counters, some with reports going back to the 1920s. As one PA biologist noted wryly: "Best reintroduction we ever did. Everyone sees 'em, but no one can find 'em…"
BTW, the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy wasn't working solo, they collaborated with Central Michigan University. You mention they used an army of cameras. A number of the cam-pics in the UP (and many from the Midwest) have been collected from random game and wildlife cams. Nevermind an army, there's a nation of wildlife cams out there. Every hunter, every sportsmen's club has got 'em now, as well as people who like getting wildlife pics, hanging out on New England hunting, trapping, houndsmen, and wildlife websites/message boards just like this one. Millions of wildlife cams (300,000 sold commercially every year, not to mention millions of surveillance cams), cameras saturating cities, the suburbs, country towns, and rural regions that cougar pics are captured on and posted to the Internet all the time.
How about tapping those New England sportsmen and wildlife message boards?