Mountain lion sighting in Barnstead is not surprise to two residents

Last week, a staff member from the state's Fish and Game Department rounded a corner on a trail in Barnstead and spotted what appeared to be a mountain lion. While sighting wildlife in that town is a regular event, the mountain lion has been officially extinct in this state for more than a century.

It's not uncommon for Fish and Game staffers to hear of reported sightings from members of the public. But for one of their own staff members to have a sighting, well, that's something different.

With a lack of physical evidence, such as a good track, scat or fur, Fish and Game is considering the sighting "possible" but also "credible." In a release issued after the sighting, Steve Weber, the department's wildlife division chief, said the animal was most likely an illegally released pet.

The sighting was not the first by a Barnstead resident.

George Krause owns about 60 acres in town, and has lived in Barnstead since 1945. A few years ago, he said, "I saw a pair lying down on the road by my pond." His land is bisected by the quiet New Road, and one sunny day Krause said he was driving down the road when he was met with the scene of two mountain lions sunning themselves. He stopped his vehicle about 300 feet from the cats, and he had a clear, unobstructed view of them.

"I can assure you, the pictures I saw in the paper of the mountain lion are exactly what I saw in the road," he said.

Krause enjoys viewing the wildlife on his property. Deer and bear are common, he's seen moose, bobcats and coyotes. "There wasn't any question in my mind that they were mountain lions." He said. "They're quite beautiful."

Stuart "Twink" Merrill is another Barnstead resident who swears Fish and Game is mistaken about its position that the big cat hasn't yet returned to New Hampshire.

"I've been arguing with Fish and Game for over 40 years about this," he said.

Merrill is a retired Fish and Game staff member. He worked as a biologist's aid, helping to study water ecologies and restock inland fisheries.

About 50 years ago, Merrill was hunting in Carter Notch, near Mount Washington, when he surprised an animal that, in his mind, could only be a mountain lion. "He went leaping through the woods and I saw the tail flying behind him." He said the tail is the dead giveaway for the mountain lion. An adult male can measure eight feet from nose to the tip of the tail, and that tail can make up half the total length. No other animal in New Hampshire has a tail that measures four feet long.

"I saw it back in in the fifties, but I can still see that tail flying behind him."

Yet, when Merrill tried to tell his story to his superiors, "They all told me I was crazy."

He thinks it's the other way around, especially when he hears it explained that the sighted animal was a released pet. "I don't believe they were released. I believe they're in the wild... they'll go a long way."

But to Mark Ellingwood, wildlife biologist for Fish and Game, the released pet explanation is more plausible than a return of a wild population.

His department receives a handful of reported sightings every month, although there are spikes in reports whenever the sightings are reported in the media.

According to cougarnet.org, there have been four confirmed sightings in the Northeast since 1991, including two in Maine and one in northern Massachusetts. Ellingwood said that evidence from the confirmed sightings, such as scat or fur, upon analysis, reveals that the animal descended from lineages native to South America. In other words, they were animals purchased as pets, illegally imported and then released when they got too big for the owner's comfort.

Aside from that, the nearest wild populations are in Florida or the Midwest. For a wild cougar to be found in New Hampshire, it would have to "travel 1,000 miles to get here through a gauntlet of human development," he said.

In conversations with colleagues from states where the mountain lions exist, Ellingwood has learned that the cats don't often go undetected. They're a shy animal that doesn't want human contact, but they will cross roadways and get hit by cars, they leave scat and identifiable tracks and they hunt livestock. If they were here, he said, they'd have made themselves known. "We've had no incidents, we've had no problems," he said.

And he sees no reason why a cougar would relocate to live in New Hampshire. They prefer to predate on deer and this state's deer population isn't nearly as dense as in surrounding states. That, coupled with harsh winters, and he said "you'd think this would be a tough state to choose."

For the time being, Ellingwood said his department is keeping an eye on the situation in Barnstead. There aren't any plans to attempt to capture the animal, although that might change if it becomes a nuisance. If it is a released pet, he said it isn't likely to be able to find its own meals on a regular basis and could show

up "begging" at someone's door step.

In any case, he encouraged members of the public to report their sightings of mountain lions. Photographs or samples of scat or fur are especially appreciated. "We want to know that people are seeing things," he said.