LONDONDERRY — The Londonderry Conservation Commission invites the public to a fact-filled talk by biologist Sue Morse entitled “The Cougar Comes East.”
The free program is Tuesday, Oct. 3, at 7 p.m., and will be held at Flood Brook School on Route 11.
Not only are cougars being seen in eastern North America, some are attempting to recolonize their former habitats.
In a phenomenon that was once flatly dismissed as an impossibility in the eastern U.S. and Canada, scientists have now documented cougar dispersals and even occupancy in a growing list of eastern states and provinces.
Morse will present a magnificently illustrated introduction to cougar biology and ecology in the broad diversity of habitats where she has studied them, from Alberta to the Arizona/Mexico border. She also will discuss the latest confirmations of cougars in the East, including the recently documented suitability of a substantial amount of wild habitats from Manitoba to Louisiana and Maine to Georgia.
Morse is a forester, habitat ecologist, professional tracker, and passionate student of the woods. She loves solving the mystery of a claw mark on a tree or figuring out who deposited black scat in the forest surrounding her farm. Her scientific method is simple and neat. She calls it “ground truthing.” She gathers facts by walking in the forest and making observations, much as naturalists John Burroughs and Henry David Thoreau and scientist Jane Goodall did in decades past.
She is at home in the forest, having grown up in the forests and farming country of Mount Airy and Norristown, Pa. Morse comes for a long line of landscapers and foresters, and her parents, grandfather, and great-grandfather all planted and grew trees for a living.
Morse lives in northern Vermont and has studied bobcats, lynxes, and cougars for more than 40 years. In 1994, she formed a nonprofit conservation organization called Keeping Track. Its mission is to inspire community participation in the long-term stewardship of wildlife habitat.