Posted on 08/17/2006 5:02:01 AM PDT by Marius3188
UPPER TOWNSHIP — The Township Committee is trying to determine whether mountain-lion sightings in the area are fact or phantom.
Mayor Richard Palombo this week publicly urged residents who have seen a large cat — maybe a mountain lion or a big bobcat — to notify the township's animal-control officer.
“At this point, we're making everyone alert about it. The animal-control officer is looking at it if anyone sees an animal,” the mayor said.
Liam Hughes, who handles animal control in parts of Atlantic and Cape May counties, said there are no confirmed lion sightings. Nor could anyone find scat or tracks, called pug marks.
But the lion stories persist.
“There are reports of it. Nothing positive,” Hughes said. “Did you see this? Did you hear this? There are credible people who believe they saw something.”
State Police in Woodbine and the Cape May County Park & Zoo are aware of the rumored sightings. The zoo is home to the county's one and only known mountain lion.
Hughes said a cougar could make a tidy living in Upper Township, home to the Great Cedar Swamp and its countless muskrats, rabbits, turkey and deer — all cougar favorites.
But could a large cat remain undetected in a suburban township such as Upper?
“Mountain lions are reclusive animals in general. They won't come out in daylight. They generally will stay away from people,” Hughes said.
The state Department of Environmental Protection fielded unsubstantiated reports of a mountain lion roaming Monmouth County this year, spokeswoman Darlene Youhas said. But there have been no confirmed sightings in New Jersey in more than a century, she said.
The big cats are known by many names, including panther, catamount, puma and cougar.
A state biologist who looked at photos of Woodbine horses that suffered scratches said the marks likely were made by a post, tree or other inanimate object, not a set of panther claws.
Hughes has handled his share of wildlife calls as Upper Township's animal-control officer. Most complaints concern thieving raccoons or skunks. But he has chased a peacock down Route 9 and secured a herd of peripatetic cows.
The idea of a large cat wandering northern Cape May County seems to have fired people's imaginations, Hughes said.
“There is an element of mystery to the animal. People are enthralled by large cats. There's definitely one part mystery, one part fear,” he said.
See a lion?
Upper Township's animal control officer can be reached at 609-399-0199.
To e-mail Michael Miller at The Press:
MMiller@pressofac.com
Lots of people think of New Jersey as nothing but refineries, but the Pine Barrens are a huge wilderness area (I always loved that episode of The Sopranos in which Chris and Paulie get lost in there...) Anyway, I don't think it's too far-getchged that cougers could have taken up habitat in the Pine Barrens....?
whoops: far-fetched.
I used to live in Litchfield Co., CT on 15 wooded acres. One winter morning, just after dawn, I saw a large cat-lookin' creature plodding though through about 1' of new snow about 30 or 40 yds from the back of my house. It was difficult to see 'cuz it was just into the tree line, but it was definitely a cat and was at least the size of a medium-sized dog. I still kick myself for not goin' out to look at its tracks.
Well...that cat will be dead soon.
The terrain in the Pine Barrens isn't 'cougar-country'... big cats need rocks... high rocks.
Could be. I bet the Pine Barrens has more hunting clubs per ten square miles than any other place in the country.
Who would have thought there is an "Upper NJ" in lower NJ. Not only that, but the highest point in southern NJ is Arney's Mount which is every bit of 100' above sea level. Most of southern NJ is flat as a pancake. Severely flat.
Not exactly true, they do tend to adapt to most terrains. Look at Florida, we have Panthers and such.
Back around 1960 I had a wild pheasant wander into my yard, much to my dog's delight. If I'd been looking the other way I'd have seen the Empire State Building quite clearly.
Nowadays you'd be hard put to find a tree that wasn't approved by a code officer over there.
However, Cape May county is another matter entirely. I see nothing at all odd about a big cat sneaking around down there, even in 2006. Only if he's letting folks see him I do question his judgment and maturity.
Having seen and heard one "painter" in the mountains of north Georgia, I might tend to agree ... but the Florida Panther evidently didn't get the message.
Funny, though, I can believe that there are cougars in NJ. Not counting the 'women' cougars of course.
What makes you think so? They're in suburban Northern Virginia. (Big cats, not rocks.) One was seen on the security video of the parking lot at AOL headquarters in highly-suburban Reston, Virginia several years ago.
Hey, whatever happened to those Russians anyway? They had terrible interior decorating.
Really!?!? Not at all surprised, given what I saw that one time.
Black Panthers are native to south FL... if you find them in NJ... they're working for Hillary. ;)
LOL!
I find an NJ sighting as somewhat... absurd.
The Middle Atlantic region is one that historically had a healthy population of cougars but it is also a region that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was heavily cleared and/or logged and game was decimated. The land since then has become heavily reforested and game has returned. Today, deer are very abundant making it potentially a good environment for the return of cougar to the landscape. However, there does not appear to be any evidence of either transients or remnant populations at this time. The occasional confirmations are most likely escapees or intentional releases and/or their progeny.
Meow!
Or maybe it's just the Jersey Devil.
" I don't think it's too far-getchged that cougers could have taken up habitat in the Pine Barrens....?"
Nah, the Jersey Devil would have eaten them all.
I tend to agree with you. We have big cats here....puma, panther and bobcat.....and I'm in the woods of East Texas. They obviously adapted well....because I have spied them on several occasions....and all look very healthy.
Yup. It is RE Wilding.
Rewilding and Biodiversity - Goals for Continental Conservation
Rewilding as a Responsibility
In addition to the scientific justifications for rewilding there are ethical and aesthetic justifications, although some are specific to the North American situation. First, there is the ethical issue of human responsibility. In many regions the deliberate government policy has been to exterminate large carnivores. Unfortunately, this practice continues. The federal agency charged with this task, Animal Damage Control (recently renamed Wildlife Services) still exists. Because carnivores are generally long-lived, produce few young, and nurture those young over a long period of time, their capacity to recover from over-hunting or extirpation campaigns is relatively limited (Noss et al. 1996, Weaver et al. 1996). This underlines the need, if only temporary, for benign human intervention in the form of reintroduction or augmentation of carnivores.
Second, by insuring the viability of large predators, we restore the subjective, emotional essence of "the wild" or wilderness. Wilderness is hardly "wild" where top carnivores, such as cougars, jaguars, wolves, wolverines, grizzlies, or black bears, have been extirpated. Without these components, nature seems somehow incomplete, truncated, overly tame. Human opportunities to attain humility are reduced.
Nonetheless, rewilding is not the only goal of most regional reserve design efforts. The Wildlands Project encourages planning groups to address the major "wounds" or ecological insults caused by abusive land uses of the past that require redress, a notion that is easily traced to Aldo Leopold and other early ecologists (Foreman, in prep.). Among the most common of these wounds to wildlands is the extirpation of large predators, but there are several others that often require treatment, including overgrazing and destruction of riparian habitats, irrigation and hydroelectric projects, poor forestry practices, over-fishing, habitat abuse and stress in animals from mechanized recreation, introduction of exotic species, draining or pollution of wetlands, and habitat changes stemming from decades of fire suppression. Rewilding does not address all of these, but it is one essential element in most efforts to restore fully functioning ecosystems. Repairing all past insults requires a comprehensive effort. We encourage the use of focal species (Miller et al. In press) when addressing these wounds.
Bobcat?
Taken From: The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, Article8a-e; United Nations Global Biodiversity Assessment, Section 13.4.2.2.3; US Man and the Biosphere Strategic Plan, UN/US Heritage Corridor Program, “The Wildlands Project”, WildEarth, 1992.
And a zoom section of the NE.
ping
This was bigger than a bobcat, if I remember correctly (it was in winter of '02, I think). I guess I'll never know for sure what it was.
That Russian Chris and Paulie shot was ex-spetnaz, and tough as nails. I always thought the fact that he was never found, and that Paulie's car went missing, meant that the writers/producers had planned a follow-up wherein the Russian shows up again - but it never happened.
You may be right about that - I'm certainly no expert, or even close. But I have the feeling that with all the crowding of habitat that's going on, what with eco-friendly hunting bans and so forth, the animals are increasingly being forced to adapt to whatever they can get.
"The Jersey Devil would have eaten them all."
Or the pineys would have.
UN and rewilding.
Once these oldtimers retired... the stories went away. ;)
A couple of years ago, there was one roaming around Westport. CT.
As far as Cape May goes. Smart cat! I believe Cape May is a town that cares for its strays. They are all over the place, well-cared for and well-fed. Maybe he thinks he can blend in?
There is a mountain range here too. Watchung Mountains.
Growing up in PA, I thought NJ was just one long shore line. We just thought of the beaches here. I had no idea, until I moved here to south Jersey, that there was so much wilderness. A lot of farms, too. The longest-running rodeo is in NJ. But now the shopping malls are building up more and more and beginning to take up a lot more space...
Didn't see the episode, but that's funny because, the rumor is, the Pine Barrens (a.k.a. Pinelands) is where a lot of missing mobsters end up. ;-)
Pine Barrens: Home of Kalliwicks and Mosquitos. Made the mistake of visiting Batso village after a period of heavy rain and must of lost a pint of blood to those pests.
I work only seven miles from Trenton. There are farms around my office complex.
Jersey Devil in the Pine Barrens :)
I've been to Tindall Farm (near your office).
Humor me... describe the tail.
It depends on what you call South Jersey. To me, anything below Trenton, is South Jersey. To somebody in Bergen County, South Jersey is anything south of Bergen County. Hunterdon county is neither North or South. It's in the sticks. Damn near part of Appalachian Mountains as far as I'm concerned.
It's got more tractors than cars, near as I can tell. There is one thing about Hunterdon County that impresses me though. Democrats are clearly an endangered species there.
First that pig/dog/chupa thing in Maine; now this in New Jersey!
The Township's name is Upper? Seriously?
I've been four wheeling through many areas of the Pine Barrens for 25 years. You have to stick to the trails, and can't worry about getting your paint scratched. But if you walked 50 feet off of some of those trails, you wouldn't even have to bury a body. It would never be found.
Some areas of the Pines contain Peat Bogs, and we all know what happens to bodies that get tossed in those. Jimmy Hoffa may yet rise again, 10,000 years from now.
Years ago I saw a big cat and I dont mean a house cat walking on RT 9 in north Jersey. It was black and it was dragging a huge chain behind it. I thought maybe it was a panther but I didnt stop to find out. I wasnt the only one who saw it either. How it got on rt 9 I dont know and I wasnt going to stop to catch it. Maybe somebody had a pet and just let it go. Stupid people get animals they should never try to make into pets and when they aren't cute and become too big they let them go. I camp in Bass River all summer and I see tracks of all kinds. Nothing would surprise me.
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