Mountain lions were once native to the Northeast United States, in fact at one time they lived in every part of the country. European settlers arriving in the early 18th century cleared land for farming, destroying lion habitat, as well as having bounties for the killing of these cats. Thus, by the late 19th century mountain lions were extirpated from the American Northeast as well as the mid-Atlantic, South, and Midwest.
In the early 20th century due to environmental protection acts and increased human mobility, forest cover started returning to New York state. The Erie canal and advanced methods of transportation allowed food goods to be distributed from the Midwest, where the soil was far more fertile for food production, into other areas of the country, NY included. This caused agricultural land in NY to go vacant and return to forest. New York is currently 62% forested.
With this return of forest cover came reports of mountain lion sightings. The big question- were small remnant populations of lions always present and are now growing in number, or are these cats moving into New York from elsewhere? We know for a fact that they are moving to the Northeast from South Dakota, as a young male lion that was born in SD traveled east to NY and south from there where it was hit by a car in Connecticut. I am of the belief that mountain lions were extirpated from NY by the early 1900's and the cats sighted in state are dispersals from elsewhere. I tend to think that the number of lions in NY is higher than the Department of Environmental Conservation would, and unlike the DEC which says any mountain lion in NY is either an escaped pet or transient, I think they reside in the state. My rationale for that is the sheer number of sightings, and because I believe Maine has harbored remnant populations. The last mountain lion killed in Maine was in 1938. That is 50 or more years after the last lion killed in any other Northeastern state. By the 1930s the rampant deforestation of the Northeast was in a reverse. The last lion lived in a time when forest cover was in the process of increasing. That seems unlikely to me. I am of the opinion that mountain lions have been residing in NY in recent times, being dispersing males from Maine and Canada, as well as the occasional western transient. I don't think there is sufficient evidence NY has a breeding population, however.
I had a potential mountain lion encounter in the Catskill mountains in October 2013. On a bushwhack hike in some of the most remote terrain the park, I heard a deep, loud, guttural growl. It sounded huge. It came from a thicket about 50 feet away from where my hiking partner and myself were descending. I asked him if he heard it and he said he did, and we made a wide berth around the thicket. I noticed he had his hand on his knife, which was attached to his belt in a sheath. It was indescribably tense. We finished the hike we spoke about it, and he (an experienced outdoorsman) said it didn't sound like a black bear, and I agreed. Black bear, in fact, do not growl. Later on, I listened to audio of black bear, coyote, bobcat, and mountain lion and it sounded like a mountain lion. I think we came across a mountain lion with prey, which it dragged into the thicket, and it didn't want us around it's meal.
