Can mountain lions make a comeback in the US north-east? One group hopes so | US news

L.Last summer, a wildlife photographer saw, or believed he saw, a mountain lion in South Burlington, Vermont. While possible, it is also remarkable: The apex predator went extinct in northern New England in 1881, and the nearest confirmed breeding population is 2000 miles away in North Dakota.

But if Mighty Earth, a U.S.-based rewilding organization, can persuade state and local authorities, as well as Vermonters in general, to reintroduce the top predator, known as cougar, cougar, panther in various regions and catamount in the northeast, more conclusive findings may emerge in the coming years.

According to a survey by Mighty Earth member, Bring the Catamounts HomeTwelve times more Vermonters support the idea than opponents. “Scientists and researchers have identified habitat suitable for large amounts of recovery throughout the Northeast,” said Renee Seacor, the group’s northeast rewilding director.

Vermont is perhaps not alone in being home to mountain lions in the United States. A viral video of a mountain lion recently caused a frenzy in New York state. in kansas trail cameras We filmed the creatures. In fact, there have been 117 incidents in the state since 2007, with 65 of them occurring in the last two years.

There have been other sightings in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and other states. While many are other creatures, such as bobcats or escaped exotic pets, most experts agree that mountain lions are returning to the eastern United States, where they once roamed.

But in Vermont, Mighty Earth is unusual in its active campaign to bring them back home. The group has launched what it calls “catamount talks” in the state, focusing on the predator’s history in the region and what it would mean to bring them back.

“They were once a keystone species and played a vital role in maintaining healthy ecosystems and supporting biodiversity,” Seacor said. “We sat down with Vermonters and discussed what it means to live with this species again.”

Seacor said reintroducing mountain lions could benefit ecosystems where they are currently the dominant predator (other than humans). They will control deer populations, thereby reducing damage to vegetation and allowing a broader balance of species to coexist. They would even reduce risks such as Lyme disease and vehicle collisions with deer, which become common when deer populations get out of control.

Much of the concern about reintroduction efforts focuses on the potential impact on pets and livestock and how mountain lions might affect hikers and skiers. However, they are thought to be reclusive and shy and are extremely avoiding people. The numbers show it’s there 30 deadly attacks on humans It has been in the United States for more than a century.

Farmers in the northeastern states were initially opposed to mountain lions because they killed sheep; This was a natural consequence of the predator’s natural prey decreasing as farmers cleared forests for grazing. But nearly 150 years have passed since the last mountain lion was killed in Vermont, allowing the area to reforest and white-tailed deer populations have exploded, infesting the forest floor.

As part of the Vermont effort, Mighty Earth flew in Beth Pratt, executive director of the National Wildlife Federation in California. #SaveLACougars A campaign that talks about coexistence with mountain lions in densely populated areas.

“We’re trying to understand what the political and social environment is in terms of support and opposition,” Seacor said.

The massive reintroduction effort is embedded in a broader drive to rewild parts of the United States; This effort almost invariably encounters opposing political and philosophical forces.

Questions about how or not to manage U.S. environments long altered by human actions are being addressed through the rewilding movement, which aims to return environments to a more natural or less managed state, often through the reintroduction of top predators.

“There is a tremendous opportunity to reintroduce missing species and missing ecological processes in the United States in ways that are more natural and less manicured,” said Josh Ginsberg, president of the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Research in New York.

Ginsberg points to the reintroduction of the beaver, once hunted to near extinction with an estimated population of 200 million, but now estimated at 10 to 15 million in the United States.

Groups like Mighty Earth argue that nature itself holds the key to the challenges of climate change by allowing natural processes to continue, including the reintroduction of grazing species such as bison or apex predators that once dominated the American prairies.

Reintroducing mountain lions to Vermont as a breeding population could occur naturally, but Seacor estimates it would take decades as mountain lions migrate from the Dakotas to the Carolinas and Tennessee and up the Appalachian chain in the northeast.

Ben Goldsmith, Host of the Rewilding the World podcastHe said New England offers a significant opportunity for the restoration of species, including mountain lions, because the region has already recovered much of its forest cover and nature has never been destroyed as extensively as in the United Kingdom.

“Britain has had to focus on proactive nature restoration in a way that America hasn’t, and we’re getting surprisingly good at it,” he said, pointing to a move away from unconditional farm subsidies and toward land management programs that reward nature conservation and restoration.

“Britain is still afraid of charismatic wildlife, which is why we have struggled to come to terms with the return of beavers and wild boars, even centuries after they were eradicated, and why we haven’t introduced lynx or wolves yet. Britain can learn from America, where charismatic wildlife has reintroduced in many places,” he adds, pointing to moose, moose, wolves in Yellowstone and Colorado, and mountain lions moving from Texas to America. In Florida in the 1990s.

But ecologists hope for the best. Mountain lions are not a federally protected species, so state wildlife officials in Vermont won’t have to go through federal approval processes if they decide to move forward with studies that would necessarily precede official recolonization efforts.

“If you have a healthy mountain lion population, you can probably significantly reduce the number of wild-tailed deer,” Ginsberg said. “This will provide space for recovery of oak-dominated forests.”

What about after the lions return? “The next phase of rewilding in the forested northeast could be the reintroduction of animals such as elk, forest bison and wolves,” he said. “If we give this a hundred years, of course it will happen naturally, but there is a desire to accelerate this through active restoration.”