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State has documented a moose in the Water gap maybe in the 70s. Hung out for a few and ambled back up north.
Nj is a receptacle for captive critters released frm NY apartments and elsewhere. Looks like wilderness compared to Manhattan. Big cats are often illegally possesed and there are many sanctioned homes for unwanted lions and tigers, Shambola sp? is one. run by Tippy Hedron.
News stories of full grown tiger in a NY apartment is not as rare as you might think. The tiger found roaming around Great Adventure was probably a cast off. They never proved it came frm the tiger lady, which should have been a piece of cake to prove.
Fromn the NYT 2003
"From a Cub to a Menace, and Now a Mystery
By LYDIA POLGREEN and JASON GEORGE
Published: October 6, 2003
"His obsession began innocently enough, with the puppies and broken-winged birds every little boy begs to bring home. Over the years, Antoine Yates's taste in animals grew ever more exotic, neighbors said, and his collection came to include reptiles, a monkey or two and, according to one neighbor, even a hyena. He had a deep affection for living creatures in need of a home that he might have picked up from his mother, Martha Yates. She had raised dozens of foster children in her five-bedroom apartment in a public housing high-rise in Harlem, according to one of her foster sons. In time, Mr. Yates's most exotic pet, a tiger that he named Ming, grew to more than 400 pounds, and that happy home disintegrated. Terrified, Ms. Yates, 67, packed up the last two of her foster children and moved to a suburb of Philadelphia earlier this year, neighbors said. Mr. Yates, 37, hard pressed to control the tiger, apparently decamped, too, to a nearby apartment. He continued to feed the tiger by throwing raw chickens through a door opened just narrowly enough to keep a paw the size of a lunch plate from swiping through, neighbors said."
So a mountain lion could be freed hand raised cats or it is within the realm of possibility that a transient wild cat roamed across the border. Really hard to believe as a predator in that class would not leave undeniable evidnce of its existence.
We have porcupines and fishers so anything is within the realm of possibility in NJ. Bobcats are said to be on the rise. you can live in bobcat country and never see one in a lifetime, not so with a mountain lion, at least you would see sign.
The state would be in a predicament if clear and undeniable ML evidence was produced.
It was an unusual call, even for Mahwah. The park-dotted township in northeastern New Jersey was the site of a mountain-lion sighting yesterday afternoon.
About 3:30 p.m., a Federal Express employee called the police to report that a wildcat was lurking near the FedEx parking lot, just off Route 17, said Sgt. Robert Sinnaeve of the Mahwah Police Department.
Sergeant Sinnaeve called Bergen County animal control officials, and he and other officers sped to the parking lot. At least one news channel helicopter flew to the site.
njkate, are you seriously going to believe a document the government has issued? I have been living here in the same woodsy town in northern nj for 60 years. When we were growing up and going out to play, Daddy would say 'watch out for the mountain lions'; not the bears because there weren't any. We first started noticing them in the 70's and more prevalent in the 80's.
Gotta laugh when all the bergen county people come up on the weekends going to Norvin Green. We always say "Feel free to take home all the ticks and snakes that you want."
P.S. - I hope you didn't believe that CDC guy when he said there's no threat from that man with ebola.
Don't even get me started...it's bad enough the misinformation the CDC gives out about Lyme Disease, who in their right mind would trust them on this Ebola outbreak
As it turned out yesterday, the town still hasn't had one. Sergeant Sinnaeve, peering through binoculars, saw what he described as ''a very large stray tabby cat.'' The cat, orange and brown with a striped tail, ''was definitely a bigger-sized cat,'' the sergeant said.
That's what I thought.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lovesMountains
Don't even get me started...it's bad enough the misinformation the CDC gives out about Lyme Disease, who in their right mind would trust them on this Ebola outbreak
Holy crap-there's going to be a tin foil shortage before long. No wonder Alcoa's earnings are expected to be so good
This has wandered off topic but there was a documented road killed mountain lion in CT just a few years ago.
Also, we've seen a large bobcat very similarly colored to a mountain lion in eastern PA a few times. To some close up it sort of resembles a small mountain lion (the shorter tail length is clue that it isn't). At a distance and a quick glance, its size could be deceptive as, it is much larger than a common house cat. It is probably 25-40 lbs. We saw it hunt and take a normal sized woodchuck (5-10 lbs) like a cat takes a mouse.
No, this doesn't change the tragedy of the event, but it does help to clarify the extreme rarity of this type of attack.
It might seem so, but not really. What people don't realize is how the landscape of New Jersey has changed so dramatically over it's history. This change in landscape also was reflected in the change in wildlife. Areas of the state that are now dense forest (Stokes State Forest, the Delaware Water Gap, Newark Watershed, etc...) were at one point or another completely clear cut, twice, in some cases, over the course of the state's history. Habitat was drastically changed and hunting/extermination of wildlife was completely unregulated. 150-200 years ago there were far fewer bears than there are now. Thousands fewer.
If you look at the number of bears in New Jersey over the last 400 years, you see that the number of bears dropped precipitously with the arrival of Europeans and westward expansion. This was due to a combination of habitat destruction and indiscriminate killing of bears along with any other predators that threatened livestock and crops. However, beginning in the 1970s, the numbers began to increase rapidly. It wasn't until the last 15-20 years or so that conditions became ripe for such a tragedy to occur. The question isn't how many bear attacks New Jersey has had in the last 150 years, it's how many will occur in the next 150.
Last edited by Badfish740; 10-10-2014 at 06:05 PM..
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Correcting some misinformation...
