Are there lions in New England?
Declared extinct in the region in 2011, mountain lion sightings continue. Either way, these powerful, stealthy cats continue to play with our imagination.
Our neighbors are seeing lions again. Every few years someone posts a mountain lion sighting on our local listserv, and a flurry of affirming responses follows.
“A Mountain Lion ran across our back field a few nights ago. They are here... Stay safe, everyone.”
“They are here as I have seen them in North Egremont. There was no mistaking it for something else.”
“Twenty years ago, up on a gentle slope I saw TWO lions; one bigger than the other; a pair! Long, long tail.”
“We saw one about 8 years ago at the entrance to my driveway … no bobcat they!”
Thing is, state wildlife authorities say unequivocally there are no mountain lions in Massachusetts, including where we live in the Berkshires in the rural western part of the state. The last recorded killing of a mountain lion was in 1858. That’s shortly after our 240-year-old home was converted from a village schoolhouse into a residence.
“Seeing the real thing is always possible, but a sighting of a genuine mountain lion in New England is so rare that it is the wildlife equivalent of winning a jackpot in the MegaMillions lottery,” wrote Tom French, the assistant director of MassWildlife’s national heritage and endangered species program, in Massachusetts Wildlife Magazine in 2015.
At the time of the European settlement, Mountain lions roamed throughout New England. Colonists were terrorized by these powerful, solitary cats that can be six feet long and weigh upwards of 150 pounds. Capable of running 40 mph, yet stealthy and elusive, they have long tails and paws with sharp retractable claws. They wreaked havoc on settlers’ livestock and were actively hunted. Settlers offered bounties to encourage their removal.
Mountain lions entered deep into the human consciousness, mythologized as something to be respected and feared. They are known also as cougars and pumas, regionally they were called catamounts and in some areas devil cats.
The last recorded killing of a mountain lion in New Hampshire was in 1855. In Vermont, the last known killing was in 1881. In Maine, it was 1938.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concluded in 2011 that the cougar was extinct in the eastern United States. Today they are known to be breeding in 15 states west of the Mississippi, and Florida, and are believed to number no more than 30,000 nationwide, according to the Mountain Lion Foundation, an organization dedicated to ensuring the survival of North America’s last surviving lion.
Yet reports of their sighting persist in New England. In June 2011, a motorist struck and killed one on the Wilbur Cross Parkway in Milton, Connecticut. Genetic testing subsequently showed it had traveled 1,500 miles from South Dakota, supporting the contention of some that they continue to make their way east, possibly through Canada, though authorities insist that’s unlikely or, if so, exceedingly rare.
Despite my ingrained skepticism, part of me wants to believe they’re here. Life is richer if there are questions we can’t answer, when there are enduring mysteries that can keep us up at night. It’s part of our nature. Why do people see the Loch Ness monster? Or UFOs? Or Sasquach?
I don’t know. I don’t believe the Loch Ness monster exists. Or Sasquatch for that matter. Jury’s still out on UFOs, maybe because I saw something in the dark sky while driving home on a rural New Hampshire road late one night many, many years ago. It still gives me chills when I think about it.
I’ve always been open to the unexplained, even when it seems foolish or naive. Now seems as good a time as any to stretch the imagination and embrace the fanciful through something chimeric and elusive. Even if they no longer live among us, mountain lions can help us understand what we have lost and deepen our appreciation of our connection with the past.
For Europeans settling a strange and wild continent, they were mysterious and dangerous, and symbolized their understandable fear of the unknown. I think they still play that role today, which may help explain why so many rational, level-headed people keep seeing them.
In his masterful novel North Woods, Daniel Mason captures the catamount’s enduring hold on the region’s imagination. Set over a span of four centuries in the Berkshires, it tells the story of a house, the people who live and die in it, what gets lost over time and what endures.
Early in the book, Mason presents a ditty titled “The Catamount.” It’s the early 1700s, and the refrain captures the outsized role played by the mountain lion in the lives of the early settlers of western Massachusetts. The refrain goes:
“And still the great cat stalks the hills
O’er bracken, brook, and stone.
Lock up you doors at night my dears,
Keep lad and lass at home.”
In one scene in the book, set in the latter half of the 20th century, two police officers come upon a disemboweled and partially dismembered corpse frozen in the woods.
“Catamount,” one says. “Half the county claims to have seen one or known someone who did, but Fish and Game says there hasn’t been one in New England since old times … “
“That’s what they say,” his companion interrupts. “No native population is what they say. But every decade or so, they find one, wandering far out of its range.”
Then he adds: “Other folks think they’re here and watching.”
Maybe they’re still out there, maybe they’re not. Either way, their presence endures.
Here’s a selection of recent posts:
I know where to find ramps, but can’t tell you where
I was going to ask if you’d read North Woods since it pertains to where you’re living. And of course the local ski resort is Catamount.
I'd like to know more about the one killed on the Wilbur Cross Parkway. It would have had to cross a lot of roads to get to Connecticut. Maybe it hitched a ride....
Beautiful drawing, BTW.