This commentary is by Renee Seacor, the Northeast Rewilding Director at Mighty Earth, working on catamount restoration in Vermont.
Did you know that white-tailed deer, moose and even wild turkey were once nearly extinct in Vermont?
Over the last century, wildlife professionals and communities across the region have worked together to bring back numerous species that were lost to unregulated hunting and widespread habitat destruction — at a time when our forests were nearly stripped bare. Today, many of those species are so common that it’s hard to imagine Vermont without them.
Restoration is the inspiring modern conservation legacy of the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department and agencies across the Northeast. Our forests have rebounded from nearly 80% deforested to roughly 75% forest cover statewide. And yet they are still missing one of the most iconic animals and a crucial keystone species that once called this place home: the catamount.
While catamount sightings are reported each year, there is no breeding population of catamounts in the Northeast; Vermont’s last confirmed catamount was killed in 1881. The preserved remains of that animal now sit on display at the Vermont Historical Museum.
Yet the catamount remains woven into Vermont’s identity as the mascot of the University of Vermont, in local businesses and breweries, and in the art and imagery that surround us, an enduring cultural presence that reflects a loss on the land that has never been fully reckoned with.
That missing piece of our forests and history is why we support a bill recently introduced at the Statehouse, H.473, which proposes that the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department lead a science-driven process to evaluate whether restoring catamounts is feasible.
Recent scientific evidence suggests the Northeast has both the habitat and public support to seriously consider restoration. Research by the Cougar Research Collaborative shows a 12:1 ratio of public support to opposition in Vermont. That work builds on decades of research and dialogue examining habitat suitability and modeling, public attitudes and dispersal corridors, much of which has consistently pointed to the ecological capacity for the species’ return — alongside the need for political will to make it possible.
Bringing catamounts home will require leadership and the same long-term vision that guided the restoration of beaver, white-tailed deer and wild turkey.
While a dispersing male catamount can travel more than 1,000 miles from western breeding populations, such events are exceptionally rare. So rare, in fact, that only one has been documented in the Northeast in recent decades, and scientific modeling shows natural reestablishment without intervention would likely take more than a century — if it occurs at all.
That reality places the question of their return in our hands: whether we choose to bring them home and learn to coexist with a species once wrongly extirpated from our region.
The catamounts’ possible return raises important and timely considerations for Vermonters. The urgency of action is underscored by the state of nature itself: global wildlife populations have declined an average of 73% in just the last 50 years, signaling a system under severe strain. Amid a climate and biodiversity crisis, evaluating the role of native carnivores like catamounts as a nature-based solution deserves careful, timely consideration.
Across the West, where catamounts still roam, their positive ecological role is well established. By keeping deer populations in check, they can prevent over-browsing and allow young forests to regenerate naturally, a benefit many foresters might welcome. They have also been linked to fewer deer-vehicle collisions and reduced transmission of wildlife diseases such as chronic wasting disease.
Catamounts are solitary and elusive animals that typically avoid people, and the risk they pose to humans is extremely low — far lower than domestic dogs or even deer on our roadways. But they are a large carnivore species, and their return raises important considerations for Vermonters.
For farmers, coexistence is possible but requires planning, resources and conflict mitigation. Western ranchers have developed tools for living alongside the species, including protective fencing, guardian animals and changes in husbandry practices to reduce conflict. For those committed to working lands, this is a question of adaptation as we learn to live again with a species long missing from Vermont.
Over the past year, I’ve had conversations with Vermonters across the state about what it would mean to welcome the catamount back home. Together, we have started to explore that answer, and Vermont Fish and Wildlife can be a central part of that conversation.
A feasibility study is, by design, an answer-generating process that gives wildlife professionals the time and space to evaluate ecological, social and logistical questions and set timelines guided by responsible science. It’s a conversation that deserves serious consideration now, particularly for a species which has been missing for more than a century, and whose absence is felt across our landscapes.
H.473 offers Vermont a responsible way forward — by having the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department lead a science-driven evaluation of catamount restoration. Most importantly, it creates an opportunity for Vermonters from all backgrounds to take part in a shared conversation about the future of our landscape and the legacy we want to leave behind.
Catamounts belong here. They roamed these forests for millennia, and it’s time we began the careful work of welcoming them home.
