When Alexander Crowell shot Vermont’s last documented catamount in 1881 on a snowy Thanksgiving morning in Barnard, a local newspaper portrayed the hunter as heroic and his 182-pound prey as a monster.
“He had killed many sheep and lambs in different parts, and the people greatly rejoiced at his death,” the Standard newspaper reported.
Today, some wildlife conservationists would rejoice if the big cats could call the Green Mountains home again — and they are hoping the state legislature will do something about it. Reintroducing the animals remains a long shot, but the discussion has reanimated the debate about the catamount’s place in Vermont.
Despite their absence, catamounts — the animals known almost everywhere else as mountain lions, cougars, pumas or panthers — still have a claim on the public imagination. Dozens of alleged catamount sightings occur each year, though none has ever been verified by state wildlife biologists. (Most are actually bobcats, their much smaller cousins). And the catamount is enshrined as the mascot of University of Vermont sports teams, with a life-size bronze statue on campus.
“The excitement for this idea spans the spectrum,” state Rep. Amy Sheldon (D-Middlebury) said recently of reintroducing the big cats. “It goes from ‘We’re the Catamounts; of course we should have catamounts back!’ to a deep understanding of the importance of apex predators and everyone in between.”
Sheldon chairs the House Committee on Environment, which this session considered a bill that would order a study about reintroducing catamounts. While Sheldon and some of her colleagues say the concept is compelling, scientifically sound and deserves exploration, the bill did not see much action this year. She expects to revisit the issue next year.
Supporters say reintroduction is not far-fetched. As mountain lion populations rebound across the western U.S. and Canada, researchers have been eyeing eastern forests in search of suitable landscapes.
Not everyone agrees that catamounts still have a place in Vermont.
Vermont has plenty of woodland habitat and abundant prey to support a breeding population of lions, according to Mark Elbroch, director of the puma program at the international big-cat conservation group Panthera. So do about a dozen other areas, including Minnesota’s North Woods, the Great Smoky Mountains, the Catskills, the Adirondacks and much of Maine.
But, Elbroch recently told Sheldon’s committee, Vermont has something many of those other places don’t: a human population that’s open to the idea. Surveys show that Vermonters strongly value the protection of wildlife and want to see it thrive. This is “where Vermont shines” as researchers weigh reintroduction potential, he said.
“It’s the people that are going to make the difference in whether mountain lions can survive and grow into a full population in any of these regions,” Elbroch said.
Not everyone agrees that catamounts still have a place in Vermont — most crucially, the state Fish & Wildlife Department. Rosalind Renfrew, the department’s Wildlife Diversity Program manager, said she understands the enthusiasm, calling the prospect of reintroduction “intriguing, inspiring and forward-thinking.” In a time of increasing risks to endangered wildlife, it’s natural for people to get excited about the positive ecological impacts that can flow from restoring an apex predator to its former territory, she said.
There has been considerable research about how the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park has restored balance to the ecosystem. They’ve kept elk populations in check, giving vegetation along rivers the chance to mature.
“As an ecologist, I get it,” Renfrew said, adding that her department strongly supports reintroducing wildlife when appropriate. Recent successes include healthy populations of wild turkey, bald eagles and American marten.
But catamounts are another thing entirely, she cautioned. Any program would cost millions of dollars, take years to establish and divert the department’s attention from efforts to protect the endangered species already here.
It would be the first attempt to reintroduce mountain lions in North America, Renfrew said. “This is a much bigger deal.”
Vermont’s neighbors would also need to play a part, Fish & Wildlife Commissioner Andrea Shortsleeve told lawmakers. “Mountain lions are really wide-ranging animals. They will not restrict themselves to Vermont,” she said.
A 2022 study by the group Panthera found that the primary suitable local habitat for mountain lions encompasses an area south of Interstate 89 as well as parts of western Massachusetts. At less than 12,000 square kilometers, that expanse is only slightly bigger than the minimum 10,000 square kilometers needed for a breeding population to maintain genetic diversity, Renfrew noted. By comparison, areas in Wisconsin and Minnesota are estimated to have nearly 60,000 and 40,000 acres of habitat, respectively.
And while Vermont is a rural state, it is crisscrossed by major highways and smaller roads that would pose a threat to roaming mountain lions. The number of endangered Florida panthers killed on roadways in that state should make people very concerned about the dangers catamounts would face in Vermont, Renfrew said.
Recent research is “not supporting the idea that Vermont is the best place to do this work,” she said.
Elbroch, the conservationist, counters that Vermont is part of a much bigger landscape across northern New York, Canada and New England that can be viewed as a single contiguous patch of habitat.
“If you have a healthy cougar population in Vermont, there will be conflicts.” Mark Elbroch
Resident males out West usually avoid busy highways and stick to wild areas where they have formed social groups with a number of females, Elbroch said. The females tend to remain in even smaller areas, especially when rearing kits.
Younger males are more willing to cross major roadways and other barriers as they strike out in search of mates and new territory. That’s what a remarkable animal known as “the Connecticut Cat” was likely doing in 2011 when he was struck and killed by an SUV in Milford, Conn. Researchers confirmed that the cat had journeyed more than 2,000 miles from its birthplace in North Dakota, the longest trek by a mountain lion ever documented.
Such an impressive feat does not mean, however, that western cats will move east on their own, said Susan Morse of Jericho, a naturalist who has studied mountain lions extensively and supports their reintroduction to the Northeast.
One recent analysis using computer modeling estimated that over the next 77 years, breeding populations might recolonize the southern Canadian Rockies and perhaps west Texas but were unlikely to extend east of the Mississippi River on their own.
To succeed, any reintroduction program would need to focus on capturing and releasing males and females here, Morse said. The state would need to prepare residents with a robust education campaign and beef up its wildlife staff to manage public concerns and respond to incidents. In Washington State, where Elbroch works, conflicts tend to occur when a lion hunting for its primary prey, such as deer, comes across a pet or unsecured livestock such as goats or chickens.
Attacks on people are exceedingly rare, but when they do happen, they generate widespread news coverage, further complicating support for reintroduction programs, Elbroch said.
“If you have a healthy cougar population in Vermont, there will be conflicts,” he said.
These and other challenges should not deter the state and its neighbors from pressing forward with a broader mountain lion recovery plan for the Northeast, Morse said. The cats are adaptable and have shown, even in places such as California, that they are able to navigate human obstacles and humans themselves, she said.
Instead of citing a litany of reasons why reintroduction can’t or shouldn’t be done, she said, state biologists should collaborate with advocacy organizations such as Northeast Wilderness Trust, their colleagues in other states and Canada, and embrace the planning necessary to welcome the big cats back into what was, after all, once their home.
“Let’s get out of our own way and let the animals tell us what they can do,” Morse said.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Here, Kitty? | Wildlife advocates want to bring catamounts back to the Green Mountains”
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This article appears in The Animal Issue 2025.
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