Working for the govt. myself, I always find people's thoughts that governments hide information, i.e. cougars and well, ok, bigfoot to be interesting. I know we don't do it here. I take the cougar calls here where there isn't supposed to be such an animal. While we do accept that there are cougars on the landscape, the question is what is the source? Sure they could be remnant animals but we think they are probably escaped or released former pets that have survived and could even be breeding. We don't know and we'd be the first to applaud the fact that the eastern cougar never left this area n Ontario.

That being said, here is an email I was copied on from a Montana govt. person who is a cougar biologist that I found interesting. I don't know why I'm sharing this other than to show that a lot of these folks are in fact normal. lol:

"You will find, that dealing with the many well-meaning folks who in their heart of hearts are convinced they saw a mtn lion---when in fact they clearly did not, or when there is absolutely no evidence to support their claim---can get you into hot water again and again. That is why groups like ECF and CN have really moved toward dealing only with reports that have solid evidence (or even perhaps only the cases where a cougar is killed or clearly photographed). At least in such cases there is something to hang your proverbial hat upon, even if the evidence suggests the animal was not a puma. But even then, as perehaps is true with this salt lick photo, you will have some people who refuse to accept reasonable evaluations or explanations and are convinced you are part of a large conspiracy to cover up the truth (ie that there are mtn lions behind every bush, and often, that in fact that the local fish and game agency secretly planted them).

It can be very frustrating, yet this seems to be part of the evolution or rites of passage that essentially all of us in the cougar-in-the-East world have to evolve thru. Some graduate earlier than others. I was one of the slow ones. Harley, in fact, can tell you tales of the not too distant past when I was of the belief that every good-sounding report was credible and there were not just undetected cougars but entire populations of the cat roaming around. I look back now and shake my head----what was I thinking?---but belief and hope can be powerful forces even when they don't align with reality.

The really sad thing is that really great friendships and such have been broken apart by all of this---such as disagreements over whether or not it is or isn't a puma, etc....

It's crazy...."

t.

Interesting post Terry, thanks for sharing. Are you addressing this to the 'cougar' crowd or the 'bigfoot' crowd as well?
What does this entail? Why "hot water" because of resources used to investigate or just belief that there may be something there?
thanks, Kyle

I'll begin this post with I'm a skeptic when it comes to BF (so I'm not trying to say anything about your post related to bigfoot, lack of proof, or current evidence); however, as a response to your original post, there must be proof for the "government"/agency/whatever to conclude there are cougars in an area, but there doesn't have to be proof for cougars to in fact be there. What I mean by that is that cougars can be anywhere, but they wouldn't be there based on the government unless there was proof of their presence collected and verified. So, sightings of cougars can mean they are there. The government saying they aren't there doesn't mean they aren't. I just re-read that and it is kind of confusing. If someone sights a cougar, a bigfoot, a whatever it means that they thought they saw one, and in fact they may have. If the government says there are no whatevers there it has no bearing on whether that person actually saw one. The government doesn't decide what animals are where, it only verifies when there is one without question because the evidence presents itself as such, that there is the animal there.

As a personal example, I've been told there are no elk in an area, that they just don't get there. There are rubs on the trees and there are prints there. What that tells me is the guy that makes the decision on whether they are there or not hasn't been there at the right time. Deer don't make elk tracks. Bears don't make elk tracks. Elk make elk tracks. So, to get back to the OP, if someone sees a cougar where there aren't any cougars, he either saw one when the "government" wasn't looking or he mis-identified it. The fact the "government" says it was a mis-identification doesn't mean it was and it doesn't mean the person that saw the cougar didn't see a cougar.

Kyle, the reference to "hot water" are the public who want so hard to believe that they go to the press and whoever will listen claiming conspiracy and that the govt. does not know what they are talking about. We then have to deal with bad press, etc., et. It's happening here right now with a game cam photo of a damn house cat. The guy won't believe it and even though we have bent over backwards to give him reasons and expert anaylsis, i.e. the Montana cougar expert, he's angry and he's finger pointing. Of course he's missing his 15 minutes of fame for not getting the first photo of a cougar in Ontario.

I posted this to show that govt. employees aren't all fools dressed in black. The sillier public here still swear we raise and release dragon flys to control mosquitoes, raise and release cougars to control deer and release fishers to control feral house cats. Good grief. I think there is a bit of a crossover with bf and cougars. Both rely on people who have sightings and both are suspect by the govt. until hopefully one day proven to exist. That's my opinion anyway. :-)

t.




Government can only go by the info. that they have. We all know that like you, locals see wildlife we don't think exists in that local...like your elk. A lot of public funds are spent on wildlife that are known to exist. No govt. will spend any of that money on species there is no scientific record of until it's proven. Even then there should be a population, not just a couple of animals passing through.

t.

I can understand that pictures can verify the existance of some animals but can tracks be considered verifiable evidence as well, in the governments eyes?

Even when someone tells you it's an 8' hairy bi-pedal primate looking thing?



I have a pair of shoes that only leaves cougar prints. I call them cougar soles. I wear them anytime I'm out in the middle of nowhere where there aren't supposed to be any cougars in the area

Tracks are evidence for sure but not what it takes. Again, in the case of the eastern cougar, we accept there are cougars on the landscape now (which is a big step) but are they remnant populations or pets? That's the issue. We had a cougar shot up this way and dna showed it was south american...a pet. Bigfoot? Well, I'm the only one around here who's even remotely interested. The rest of the frish and wildlife staff have a good time shooting those friendly arrows at me. lol

I'm off to the deer camp for 11 days. Good luck to all the deer hunters here. Adios.

t.

Very nice post Terry!



I agree 100%. But some people use that as evidence of a government cover up. Too much assuming going on.

How many animals that were once declared extinct have been rediscovered within the past 10 years? The government does not have an all seeing eye that can spot the resident animal populations. It's not a cover up... just a fact of life...

You can't blame people for seeing conspiracies when the gov't's wildlife offices have been caught at it time and again, esp in the west with wolf reintroduction. Maybe if your collective hands were cleaner people would listen to you more.

Oh, and you (or rather the email writer isn't) going to make many friends with his condescending "There there...you didn't see what you saw..." attitude either.

You also have to consider that the government engages in all types of behavior that could be considered "conspiratorial" every day simply as a matter of security. Anyone that tells you that the government never lies, falsely discredits, covers up and conceals information they don't want out is either naive or lying to you.

I agree, and it's a catch 22 I guess because the government doesn't have an all-seeing eye but will declare something extinct or not in an area when in fact it isn't extinct we just haven't seen one in a thousand years

Knock it off Mulder. No further warnings.

Thanks for the Post Terry but just to clarify if you would be so kind, when you saye " here " you mean Canada & not the US of A right ??

Folks were seeing Cougars in Oklahoma long before the government would acknowledge the possibility which I think was silly.Young cougars could easily travel down river valleys from the Rocky Mts in to Oklahoma without being noticed.Cougars can also swim rivers.

I think when people claim Govt. coverup with Bigfoot they are thinking CIA super sneaky Govt. not fish & game type Govt. My Dad spent 30+ years in the military gaining top secret clearence and being privy to a lot of military secrets. I remember him telling me that pretty much everything deemed top secret from a military point of view the general public would not really be interested in. There is no way that anything of signifigance such as UFO's could be kept secret by the machine that is the U.S. Govt. The whole process of keeping and maintaining UFO's or Bigfoot breeding grounds would involve too many people to keep hush hush. He sights many stories where a new "secret" peice of equipment or weapon system was being implemented for testing and he would be contacted by magazine writers asking for info sometimes only hours after he gained knowledge. I will never buy into any Govt. cover up on anything from Bigfoot to cougars to elk.

That is of course exactly what he WOULD tell you to help preserve security. It's called denial.

I'm sorry, but I have a hard time believing that the same entity that can't fill potholes on the Interstate can keep a secret that big.

Yeah, and you can't tell me the cougar I saw and came within a whisker of hitting back in the early 80's vaulting the Blue Ridge Parkway to head into one of the East's prime Wilderness Gorge systems was a pet either!

Everyone hears about the pothole that DOESN'T get filled, but never hear about the 999 OTHER potholes that do...

In the grand scheme of things, it isn't THAT big a secret for a government that routinely classifies just about everything under the sun. There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people out there with clearances that keep secrets each and every day. Everyone presumes government incompetence because that is part of the image of government it WANTS you to have so you don't look too closely or for long at things it doesn't want getting out.

Country folk in Nebraska were long reporting cougar sightings in the early Nineties. The odd thing is that our Game Dept personnel were dismissing such reports, out of hand, in a condescending manner. It was only when a cougar had to be shot (it was in a tree neighboring a school yard) in St. Paul, NE that it was, rather reluctantly, it seemed, oficially admitted the cat had returned to our state.

In agreement with Terry's original posting, I very frequently heard friends, neighbors, and land-owners speak fervently of clandestine black ops, in which our state Game dept was secretly re-introducing the cougar to our state "to take care of the deer population." As time went on, I encountered the same belief system espoused by citizens of states south and east of my own, usually for control of the deer population. The timing of this seemed a natural progression as the animals worked their way beyond my own state.

I guess it's a study of people's propensity to assign secret, nearly evil government plots to explain a natural migration in which the cats are reclaiming large portions of their historic, natural range, and I find the phenomenon fascinating.

My family saw a cougar in our front yard about 12 years ago.We live on 10 acres in a pretty rural setting near several WMA's. We'll grill in the front yard when the weather is nice and picnic. A cougar chased one of our dogs in to our front yard one day while we were eating burgers.I'm glad the cougat left when it saw us.

Awesome, I almost had cat hair all over my car......which would have probably been totaled if the cat was one second slower.

The problem I have with the government's claim that the Eastern Cougar is extinct is that it was never proven the Eastern Cougar was extinct. The assertion seems to be based upon guesswork, not evidence. Maybe 80 years ago some biologist asserted that he BELIEVED there wasn't any around, but that is not proof. Yet, such old assertions are routinely cited by the FWS as the reason they ASSUME that all sightings are escapees or transplants.

There has been one good recent study of the Monongahela National Forest with trailscams that failed to expose evidence, and they gave reasonable statistical estimates that the coverage should have revealed some if they exist. Even that study could be flawed if the trailcams emit ultrasonic sound or something else that chases away wildlife. All in all, the case that they are extinct is weak since most people can distinguish between a bobcat and cougar and a housecat. To say that ALL alleged sightings of cougars are misplaced identifications is statistically so implausible as to totally lack credibility. Yet, we do know some individual alleged sightings are false positives.

As for the claim that South American genetics identifies a cougar as an escaped pet also lacks credibility. Quite simply, cougars are far ranging and there is continuous land between South American and North America. It is nothing but an unproven assumption that genetics can identify the life history of a cougar and its ancestors.

Much the same reasoning applies to BF. To say that EVERY ONE of thousands of people, many of them highly knowledgeable, have FALSELY identified a bear as a BF lacks credibility even though surely some bears ARE falsely identified as BF. Then, there are the photos. Also the footprints, and, hair.

I'm a Fed, (US Department of Agriculture), and I've posted anti-conspiracy stuff before. I'll do it again.

I think a lot of American citizens forget, or even don't want to know, that they have direct input on how the Executive Branch operates. They are ignorant of how the system works, and have too much of their belief power invested in this black helicopter bullpuckey.

Most of what the Federal government does, MUST be published; MUST be made available to public scrutiny. Newly proposed Federal laws or changes to operating procedures in Federal agencies are public information. Check out

http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/tutorial/index.html

to find out how to PARTICIPATE, instead of bitching in some echo chamber.

We, for example, just got done accepting comments for a newly authorized program under the Farm Bill, the Conservation Stewardship Program. We got a lot of comments from conservation organizations, other Federal agencies, and private citizens who care about the land, or are farmers, etc. Every single comment gets taken into account in the rule-making process; anyone who writes and whose comment is received on time gets a little say in how the program will run. Your voice might be one of tens ... or hundreds ... or thousands. It totally depends on the number of comments submitted.



Peace,
Bogsquatch

Now let's see you convince Mulder you weren't either paid or forced by a government agent to come here and say that......

Blame the government (esp Fish and Wildlife types) for being so damn secretive. Also blame them for cominng up with these cockamame "predator reintroduction" programs to begin with. Ranchers HATE those, and with good reason, because predators cannot distinguish between "fair game" prey (wild herbivores) and "off limits" prey (cattle, sheep, etc).

Which is part of your job as a government official...to help protect the veil of secrecy about those things the govt DOESN'T want known.



Misleading, because we are not talking about the Executive, or the legislature. We're talking about the "alphabet soup" agencies and other departments that have NO democratic oversight, being unelected, and shielded from scrutiny by elected officials by clearances and "need to know".



Again, exactly what you have to say to maintain the "government doesn't keep secrets/lie/dissemble" facade.



So you make a big show of "look at all this disclosure" in one open forum while 4 other forums meet in complete secrecy.



The only way to find the secrets is to be co-opted into the secrets themselves. Then we TOO would be forced to help you propagandize about "no government secrets".



"Looll! Look over here!!!" (left hand). Meanwhile the right hand is slipping the secrets into it's pocket.

Now there you go just suckin' the fun right out of conspiracy theories Bogsquatch!

You can't because it is not possible to do so. He either really believes what he says (is naive), or engaged in disinformation (is being untruthful by order).

No sane person with any intelligence will ever believe that the government operates freely and completely above board.

99% of the time, that's a good thing. There are secrets that NEED to be kept (military, industrial, etc). But the potential for abuse not only IS there, but it DOES happen. Which is why NO government should EVER be fully trusted.

I don't quite understand what kind of secrets you are talking about Mulder. For example, do you think the government has aliens and Bigfoots stacked like cord wood in a secret warehouse somewhere ?

Hi

Why do you have to post stuff like this ?

Peace
Tim

There is nothing better than another government conspiracy to cover up the existence of sasquatch thread! A vicious circle of of excuses for the lack of evidence.

* There is no hard evidence for the sasquatch
@ Because the government is hiding it
* There is no evidence they are hiding it
@ Because they are hiding any evidence that they are hiding it
* I have a friend/relative who says they do not have evidence of sasquatch
@ They are in denial, they are paid to deny it, look at the evidence for cougars
* I know somebody who has dealt with the cougar issue and has received reports that they investigated and did not find confirmation of the cougars presence, but the difficulty with cougars is that they travel a good 25 miles a day, and I've heard even more. They could be just traveling through an area and wouldn't necessarily be evidence of a resident breeding population
@ The person who told you that, even though you've known them all of your life and they have nothing to hide from you, is working for a clandestine cult/government and is covering up the existence of cougars and sasquatch and introducing wolves to purposefully eat cattle so that the general population has no choice but to eat government bred cattle that have been saturated with flouride so that they can easily control our minds, and anyone who doubts this or tells you differently is either naive or lying.

And don't forget the chemtrails Wolfie ! We're being dusted !


Click to view attachment

Be careful boys. They know where you live!

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAAW!

if i see the ciggeratte smokeing man & skinner in this thread in future ill pop bill

Bill - is that pop, or poop?

Repeat after me... "There is no such thing as Bigfoot"

There is no such thing as bigfoot.

I think it's been well established that even though the Puma in Ontario was declared extinct we have since learned that rather the number was very small but not zero. While part of their resurgence may have been from escaped or released pets, Ontario Puma Foundation estimates that there is a current breeding population of 550 in Ontario.

http://www.ontariopuma.ca/index.html

In terms of a conspiracy by the government to suppress "anything", this is the Ontario Government we're talking about right?. Think Walkerton water tragedy, the E health scandal, and even the recent clusterf***k of H1N1 vaccine clinics last week to name a few of the accomplishments of the Ontario Government (regardless of party in power)....I'm not sure they can keep track of their house cats let alone maintain any kind of conspiracy on anything except maybe over the top expense account practices.

The ability to maintain a conspiracy aside, Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resources, seems to have summarized the status of the Cougar adequately...
http://www.rom.on.ca/ontario/risk.php?doc_...d=135〈=en

I don't see any sign of a cougar conspiracy from where I'm sitting.
gerry

Do you really think so Barack ??

I have to agree with you, even though I don't want to agree with you. The reason I don't want to agree with you, is that I don't want to be perceived as a nut case conspiracy, uh, don't know the right word here, believer I guess.

The Gov, our Gov and I would assume most Goverments keep things secret out of necessity, however that doesn't mean there are secret groups running around hiding alien crashes or the existence of Bigfoot. . .Although, if something like this were discovered, I believe it would be kept as quiet as possible, and even to the extreme of the Gov lying to the tax payers about it.

The Roswell "crash" is a good example. How many times as the military changed it's story on Roswell?? Several times at the very least. Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it doesn't. And I do believe they like to keep the public guessing on certain subjects such as Area 51. In other words, they don't mind that a bunch of nut cases are claiming they are playing w/Aliens in the desert, because this helps them keep the truth, national security secrets, secret.

And we have to keep in mind our definition of Gov. Are we talking Military, or Politicians, or Intelligent Agencies ect?? I mean the CIA for example, might be doing things our politicians no nothing about. And Im sure they are to an extent.

Just my humble opinion. Could be totally wrong.



LOL. That be funny!

And a good point. . .However, we do need to realize that there are many, many different parts of the Gov. Could the entire Gov keep something like Aliens existence a secret, NO. But could one group of the Gov that doesn't have to answer the public's questions keep such a secret? I believe it's possible. . . I'm relatively sure there are many secrets out there that the CIA, for ex., have kept 'secret' for a good while.

Nice attempt at argumentum ad absurdum...

"Having aliens and Bigfoots stacked like cord wood" is not necessary for government to be actively and passively controling information about both or either with the intent of preventing public disclosure.

The "anti-conspiracy" case rests on two primary premises, both logically flawed:

1) That the government does not engage in the keeping of secrets as policy...

This premise is absurd on it's face, since many functions of government (defense, policing, intelligence operations, etc) RELY on the keeping of secrets as a routine part of the performance of their duties. This is both proper and necessary, but it opens the door to abuse the keeping of secrets for other purposes. With no outside force to police the keeping of secrets, other than in the most general of ways, there is no effective means for the average citizen to know which secrets are being kept for good reasons, and which for bad ones.

2) That the government, even should it WISH to keep secrets, is patently unable to do so...

Debunkers quickly trot out lists of secrets that have been exposed as proof that the government is inept in the keeping of secrets generally.

This arguement fails on multiple counts:

• It presumes that the secret was easily exposed. Uncovering a government secret requires a great deal of work, and often is only accomplished with the aid of one or more inside sources. Further complicating the work is the fact that the very persons charged with accessing information for the public are themselves also required to act to KEEP information from the public.
• It presumes that the exposed secret is the ONLY secret being kept. Exposing Valerie Plame's covert status in the CIA, for example, has NOTHING to do with the identities of any other covert operative. Nor does it have anything to do with information, say, on the Kennedy assassinations (either or both).
• It treats the government as a single, monolithic entity that is completely aware of all things that happen within it at all times.

There are many other factors to take into account, but I have somewhere to be in a few minutes so I have to cut this short...

My biggest problem with government secrecy as practiced since WWII is that apparently NO-ONE has an overview of it. This has been due to the adoption of compartmented security systems partly inspired by all the Strangelove type "ex"-nazi nutjobs imported under operation paperclip and similar. Thus you have a lot of compartmented secrecy areas that just go vertical, there's no apex oversight (as in a pyramidal structure). People in one compartment don't even know of the existence of other compartments, never mind what they might be "up to". Publicly elected officials don't routinely get very far up the ladder in any of the compartments, even as oversight committees... basically they have to run their own intel ops and network to find out about the existence of compartments that they think they might want to know about.

But the other way to find out about things in government is to get your clever idea and "make inquiries" and as you get very technical with them, or deep into the subject, you'll eventually be setting alarm bells off somewhere. At this point you'll either get inducted, warned off, or frozen out. However, since the "You'll make us a laughing stock" type argument is very strong with subjects like bigfoot, you might not get past the general administrative paranoia stage there.

Anyway, if there's any bigfoot secrets in government I highly doubt they're held in fish and game, or MNR etc, though there might be one or two individuals in those organizations that pushed the subject a while back and are gagged under NDA, or if there is anything to it, the odd stooge, but it's not something that "belongs" to those agencies. Most likely anything secret about them would be held by some animal warfare laboratory or establishment. Most of what goes on in those directly publicly accountable agencies is fairly transparent and if compartmented at all it's only a couple of levels, such that any elected official should be able to get full oversight.

Ya'll don't know squat 'bout guvment conspersees. Yuns need to ask
Alex Jones

When did the NSA, CIA, FBI and other organizations that no one even knows about start filling potholes on interstates??

Hi

This thread is in the Bigfoot / Sasquatch General Discussion > Government section so let's try and keep it about that or at least on an animal subject like cougars and bears Etc.

Peace and thank you for your cooperation
Tim ~

Step 1: Cougars get hunted out of the eastern states ~ 100 years ago.

Step 2: Decades pass with no evidence of eastern cougars (other than Florida panther).

About how many of those decades should pass before the state wildlife department declares the species extirpated from the state? Two? Five?

This is a non-trivial question, especially for endangered species. How long should an endangered species be kept on the books as "endangered" with no new evidence it exists before it's OK to list it as "extinct?"

As for "rediscovery," how many anecdotal sightings (be it of cougars or whatever) are sufficient for a state game department, USFWS, etc., to determine and declare that something is no longer extirpated or extinct? One? Ten? One hundred? Now fold in the many, many cases of people swearing up and down they've photographed said cougar (or whatever) when it's easy to demonstrate that their photo depicts something mundane - like a house cat or a bobcat. Those examples certainly don't give the wildlife guys a lot of confidence in those anecdotal reports that come without photographs attached . . .

So for all you conspiraphiles out there, please write out a policy that you would like our wildlife biologists to follow that clearly indicates how to determine that a species is extinct or extirpated, and what process should be followed to declare an extinct or extirpated species back on the "extant" list.

When you do that, and you get it past the peer review of wildlife biologists outside your area, and you get it passed by your governing board and/or legislature, then you can come here and be as critical of our wildlife professionals as you like.

Nicely said Saskeptic.