Monsters and Myths

From an alleged Bigfoot in ice to a mysterious body on a beach, from a new manta ray to a giant elephant shrew, it was quite a year. It might not have been the year we wanted but it sure was the one we got.

Welcome to this year’s top stories in cryptozoology*, which, in terms of popularity, turned into quite a few months of people talking about strange and unknown animals. Sadly, most of the news items were about hoaxes. (Some stories, like the March tale of the supposed sideway-strolling “Creepy Gnome” of the town of General Guemes, in the province of Salta, Argentina, said to be digitally captured on a cellphone video, was dropped from my list of choices because it hardly seemed cryptozoological and enough hoaxes, already.)

Media was the message this year, nevertheless. Indeed, the Year 2008 will be quite memorable for the wide gap between the news of hoaxes, the few good cryptid sightings, and the remarkable discoveries of the rare new species.

This year’s annual picks were cryptozoological events that became newsworthy or were announced during 2008 (even though, as actual discoveries, they may have happened in an earlier year or years). Muntjacs to mountain gorals walked this way.

The following were the top cryptid-related tidbits of most interest to the public, cryptozoologists, Bigfooters, fans, friends, foes, and the media during the last year. The stories may not be the most groundshaking, but they are the ones that garnered the largest media reaction and greatest public discussions concerning our favorite field of study, for 2008. Enjoy the quest.

This time around, the list below is ranked according to what appeared to be the most “popular” stories to the general media and public, outside of the field of cryptozoology. On a purely raw appeal level, this was a year in which cryptozoology, especially in terms of the top three stories, did have a deep penetration into the global and American popular culture and mass media.

(1) Georgia Bigfoot Hoax.

The biggest Bigfoot hoax of the decade started its public journey in July 2008. Clayton County police officer Matt Whitton and alleged former correctional officer Rick Dyer began to tell anyone that would listen that they had tripped over a dead Bigfoot body in the northern Georgia woods in or around June 10th.

They gave a description of the body saying it had a height of eight feet, eight inches, and the fact that, if you were to shave the creature and put a hat on it, you would not be able to distinguish it from a human being. Soon, California promoter Tom Biscardi was involved, and the event took a heightened level in which millions of dollars for the body were discussed.

Despite the fact Cryptomundo readers had identified the costume being used, and others at other sites had too, when a photograph of the complete “body” became available on August 12th, the online and news frenzy continued. Biscardi promised a news conference four days later, and members of the media thought they were going to see the body of a Bigfoot.

The ultimate media circus (dubbed “Bigfoot Friday”) took place on August 15th, when CNN live streamed a news gathering involving 100 news reporters and 38 camera feeds from California. Besides a blobsquatch image of something in the woods and a blurry photo of the tongue of something, no body was shown, no carcass was placed on exhibit, and the media walked away feeling tricked.

But concurrently, the body was being sold to an Indiana construction company owner, who agreed to “loan” Biscardi $50,000 for the body frozen in an ice chest. The “body” was taken to Indiana, unthawed, and by August 19th and 20th, most media outlets had reported that a rubber costume had been discovered under the ice.

Although the media had helped create the Bigfoot frenzy, they would walk away swearing they had been duped by a hoax. Serious Bigfoot researchers had warned this was a hoax early on, but those cautions were forgotten in the wake of this fiasco. The timeline and quotations from this disaster speak for themselves.

How big was this story for 2008 in the mainstream media? Well, it was listed on several year-end lists, from Time to Mad Magazine’s list of “20 Dumbest People, Events, and Things 2008.”

Bigfoot acceptability may have been set back by 25 years.

(2) Montauk Monster.

Something strange washed ashore at Montauk Island, New York, and was photographed on July 12, 2008. It became a media circus for the New York City market. I coined beached body the “Montauk Monster” and appeared in an energy drink ad story about it. After lots of back and forth about what it might be, the consensus appeared to settle on the Montauk Monster being nothing more than a bloated decaying raccoon.

(3) Texas Chupacabras Video.

New footage of a running “Chupacabras” - i.e., in this case, a mystery canid more than any kind of remarkable cryptid - was caught on a dashboard camera by the DeWitt County, Texas, sheriff’s department. This occurred near Cuero, Texas, the new “capital” of Chupacabras activity since an earlier “mystery canid” body was found there.

(4) Giant Manta Ray Discovery.

During 2008, Marine biologist Dr. Andrea Marshall confirmed that a larger and more elusive manta ray was, in fact, a distinct species. Until then, it was thought that there was only one manta ray species.

The newly-discovered species (above) leads a different lifestyle than its smaller cousin and is migratory rather than residential. The new giant manta ray has large triangular pectoral fins, which can span almost 26 feet or 8 meters in width and can weigh more than 4409 pounds or 2,000 kilograms.

Dr. Andrea Marshall’s five years of research and finding resulted in her being named 2008’s Cryptozoologist of the Year.

(5) Sumatra Muntjac.

Crypto zoologist Debbie Martyr rediscovered the above photographed Sumatra muntjac (Muntiacus montanus), which was first discovered in 1914, and only last seen in 1930.

Martyr has been in Sumatra for over two decades, as part of a team working for Fauna & Flora International and the Kerinci-Seblat National Park Tiger Protection, which found the muntjac when they rescued it from a hunter’s snare on an anti-poaching patrol 6400 feet above sea level in the national park. Martyr’s primary cryptozoology pursuit has been of the Orang Pendek, and her conservation work has focussed on the area’s nearly extinct tigers.

(6) Colorado Lion.

The Associated Press flashed an alert on July 14, 2008, that a large maned felid has been sighted in El Paso County, Colorado, in the Falcon Highway and Log Road area, near Colorado Springs.

“An African Lion has been spotted. Two people reported seeing the lion, including one who captured a photo of the lion chasing dogs,” read bulletin. The “lion” cellphone photograph (above) had been taken by Sharon Harding-Shaw.

A helicopter and members of the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office and Colorado Division of Wildlife were among those searching for the reported African lion in eastern El Paso County. The search for the large cat was called off when it could not be found, and authorities theorized the cryptid was only a dog. But what the solution of this mystery was never fully solved.

(7) Giant Elephant Shrew.

The first elephant-shrew found in 126 years was fully verified.

Grey-faced sengi, Rhynchocyon udzungwensis. Photo credit: Francesco Rovero.

Galen Rathbun of the California Academy of Sciences, Francesco Rovero of the Trento Museum of Natural Sciences, and a team of collaborators confirmed the existence of a new species that lives only in two high-altitude forest blocks in the mountains of south-central Tanzania in 2006. But it was not until 2008, when Rathbun’s and Francesco Rovero’s discovery was published in the February 2008 issue of the British-based Journal of Zoology that the discovery was officially announced.

(8) Yetis.

The Year yielded more than its share of Yeti-related events. As an entire package, in a year when Bigfoot news was often rather negative, the Yeti news was generally positive and celebratory.

On January 4, 2008, at the Rubin Museum of Art – the museum of Himalayan art in New York City - I was asked to kick off their film festival by introducing the 1957 film The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas. On the heels of my lecture at the American Museum of Natural History a month before and the other talks I gave in 2008, for example, at the Royal Alberta Museum and the Museum of Science Boston, it signaled a new acceptance of Yetis and cryptozoology in mainstream museums.

The Yeti news came in fast and furious all year.

Ivan T. Sanderson’s classic book, Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life was republished by Cosimo Classics, during the first week in January.

Yeti hunter Sir Edmund Hillary, 88, died January 11, 2008, and most tributes to him noted his ties to the World Book Abominable Snowman expedition of 1960.

A month after Hillary died, American ornithologist Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr., 92, passed away on February 11th. He was among the members of the 1960 World Book Encyclopedia Scientific Expedition to the Himalaya led by Sir Edmund Hillary.

On March 5th, “Destination Truth” opened their second season with an exception to their usual half-hour shows, and broadcast a full hour program on Josh Gates’ finds of Yeti prints in the foothills of the Himalaya.

The third Mummy movie was released, with one of its settings in Tibet involving a sequence on an Army of Yetis.

DNA analysis of Yeti hair gathered in 2003 was revealed in October 2008, to have come from a new population of Himalayan goral (Nemorhaedus goral) in a location in southern Asia formerly unknown.

By fall, AT&T’s Yeti television ad with Bill Curtis was bringing a white Abominable Snowman into living rooms across America.

Later in October, the Japanese Yeti expedition in the Himalayas announced they had found Yeti footprints.

Last, and perhaps least, the Sci Fi Channel premiered on November 8, 2008, a new movie entitled Yeti.

(9) Bigfoot Massacre Theory.

Was the Bigfoot in the famed film from 1967 really shot and killed? Was there a “massacre“? One outspoken individual said he saw some bloody killing fields in the footage and tried to convince others during the spring of 2008 of his “facts.”

If the Georgia hoax story hadn’t come upon the scene a couple months later, people might still be talking about this one.

Bigfoot theorist M. K. Davis got more publicity than he was banking on when he began speculating at Bigfoot conferences that the Patterson-Gimlin film showed “primitive Sasquatch Indians” being massacred.

The full impact of the damage of the Bluff Creek Bigfoot “killing field” theory became apparent when M. K. Davis was asked to not speak at an August Bigfoot meeting and was banned by the hosting Bigfoot museum from attending their conference.

One online critic, the Blogsquatcher wrote an elegantly simple statement that reflected on how people felt about M. K. Davis’ unsupportable “Bigfoot massacre” or “Bluff Creek killing field” theory:

You’ll ultimately have to decide for yourselves how you feel about [M. K. Davis' speculations]. I will leave you with this thought though — for more than 40 years, nothing has been able to diminish the impact of the [Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot] Film. But maybe this grand conspiracy theory will.

Meanwhile, authentic encounters appeared to continue, with 2008’s concentration occurring in British Columbia, especially in June, July, and September-October. One new alleged report on December 28th has surfaced of a Sasquatch being hit be a pickup truck in that same Canadian province.

(10) Scott Norman’s Shocking Death.

As mentioned above, it was a year that saw the mass media talk about the death of Sir Edmund Hillary, frequently mentioning his search for Yeti.

Others died too, of course. The year had the San Francisco Chronicle making a month-long delayed announcement of Bigfoot-bad-boy Erik Beckjord’s demise. Cryptozoologists, Bigfooters, and fellow travelers do die and their lives will to be remembered.

But it was the sudden death of Mokele-Mbembe hunter Scott T. Norman, at the young age of 43, on the leap day of February 29th, which caught people off-guard.

Having survived the ridicule of Penn & Teller’s Showtime cable special on cryptozoology, without bitterness and in good spirits, Norman was working on a return to Africa, when he died without warning and somewhat mysteriously.

Others will make the journey to Africa looking for Mokele-Mbembe in 2009, and they will remember Norman and all the others who have gone before, in the continuing search for cryptids and new species.

Here’s hoping for much better things occurring in 2009 - and more good news than bad!

cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/top10cz08

For years embalmer Glenn Dennis has told an intriguing Roswell crash tale. If true, it leaves no doubt that what fell to Earth in July of 1947 in New Mexico sands was from another world. However Glenn’s story has been disputed by researchers as having serious difficulties. Today, some have all but dismissed his purported involvement in the crash events.

But new interviews and information show that the undertaker’s amazing story may well have basis in fact. And a fresh look may have uncovered the possible identity of the “missing nurse” at the Roswell base who decades ago revealed to Glenn the alien reality of the crash.

GLENN’S STORY

Glenn Dennis could only happen in a place like New Mexico. His top shirt button always clasped, he often wore a bolero. His frame was lanky but always upright- standing at least two feet taller than desert brush. A marvel of shortened hyperbole, tongue-in-cheek cusses and flirtations- this is how family remembers Glenn.

Glenn Dennis is now on the far side of 85 and a shell of his former self. He is reported to be in gravely ill health. But in July of 1947, he was an energetic young man busily employed as a Mortuary Assistant for the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, NM. Ballard’s had a long-standing contract with the Roswell military base to provide ambulance and mortuary services.

Dennis signed an affidavit two decades ago that outlined some very unusual events that he had experienced that Summer of 1947. He maintained that he had received a strange call while at Ballard’s from an officer at the Roswell base a short time after the Roswell crash. The officer was inquiring about the availability of hermetically-sealed baby caskets. Glenn was also questioned about body preservation methods. Dennis replied that he could provide the caskets- and that the best way to preserve the corpses would be to have them frozen. The officer also wanted to know about tissue and blood changes that might occur if bodies were out in the open, exposed to the elements. Curious about the odd call, Dennis asked the officer if something had happened at the base. He was told that the information was simply for “future reference.”

Soon after, Dennis was summoned to the base to pick up an injured airman. He says that on his return, he viewed what appeared to be some very strange debris from some sort of wreckage. He saw the debris in the backs of base vehicles as he slowly and deliberately passed through a ramp exit. One of the debris pieces was “canoe shaped” and about three feet long. It appeared to have odd colored hues like burnt steel, but it was not steel. It had inscribed on it 3″-4″ high “hieroglyphics” that ran in a pattern along the contour of the wreckage piece.

Glenn was spotted observing the material by an officer, who then stopped Glenn and loudly rebuked him. He demanded to know of Glenn who he was, why he was there and what else he may have seen. He told Dennis to say nothing of what he may have witnessed. Glenn told the officer to “Go to Hell.” He was a civilian who would not be talked to in that manner. The officer then threatened “Don’t kid yourself, they’ll be picking your bones out of the sand!”

Glenn explains that Roswell’s Sheriff George Wilcox made a visit to Glenn’s father’s house a couple of days later. Wilcox (a friend of Glenn’s father) warned the elder Dennis to let Glenn know that he had better keep quiet about anything he may have known or seen at the base that day.

GLENN’S CONTROVERSY

The part of Glenn’s story that is the most controversial-

Dennis states that while Sheriff Wilcox was at his father’s, Glenn was actually returning to the base to see a nurse friend. He wanted to know if she had heard anything about all of this. They discussed what she knew over Cokes at a base dining area.

She told Glenn that she had earlier witnessed a horrific site. A doctor had pulled her into a room for assistance where there she had viewed three strange “foreign bodies’” that were being examined. She nauseated from the wretching stench. She described to Glenn a classic alien humanoid form, which she had drawn on a napkin for Glenn.

The creature had an enlarged head, slit-like mouth with vestigial nose and ears, unusual eyes and enlongated arms. Hysterical in the re-telling, the nurse then admonished Dennis to leave the base immediately. That is the last Dennis ever saw of her.

In the 1990s holes began to emerge in Glenn’s story. Glenn had given researchers the name of the Roswell base nurse as “Naomi Self” - which later proved to be a phony name. He also told conflicting stories about what had become of the nurse. He said that she had died in a plane crash, that she went to England and even that she joined a convent. There are other problems with Glenn’s story. He mentioned a doctor who he said was involved, but who was later proven could not have been. It is rumored that Glenn may have asked for compensation for later interviews. And Glenn helped to establish the Roswell UFO museum, which became a source of (modest) personal income for a brief period of time.

SUPPORT FOR GLENN

Despite all of this, there are several reasons why Glenn’s tale should not be dismissed-

1) Supporting Glenns’ story is the fact that he never sought to tell it. He was found. Researcher Stan Friedman first interviewed Glenn on August 5, 1989. Friedman found Glenn because Friedman had reasoned that the Roswell undertaker may have heard something about the incident. Only later did Dennis become public on the matter.

2) The former Chief of Police for Roswell, L. M. Hall, signed an affidavit in which he recalls that -just a few days after the July 1947 crash- Dennis had recounted to him the odd call from the base about the availability of child caskets.

3) A Roswell base medical technician in 1947, David Wagnon, signed an affidavit that he remembers the nurse as described by Dennis

4) Glenn’s grandson, Kelly Abbott, states on a family history website that Glenn told his Roswell story to his close family in the 1980s. This was after the first Roswell book was published in 1980, but before “all of the books and movies” had come out in the 1990s about the incident. He says “Papa told the story with the sense that it was about time someone knew what happened. This is before he had spoken publicly.”

5) Glenn’s high school classmate was Rogene Cordes. I recently found and contacted Rogene. She is the widow of an Air Force General and believes Glenn implicitly. She was also a neighbor of Roswell Sheriff George Wilcox. Mrs. Cordes says that she knows that Glenn is telling the truth. She is cautious in relating her knowledge, but she indicates that there are things about Glenn’s story that she knows happened at the time, including the involvement of Sheriff Wilcox and the call to Glenn about ice for bodies. Rogene mentions that she could not find any ice or dry ice anywhere that crash weekend. Not at Clardy’s dairy nor at the train depot, which stored and sold dry ice. Glenn had told the base officer that the best way to preserve corpses was to freeze them. The military had found their ice.

6) A Roswell Army Air Field serviceman in 1947, Sgt. Milton Sprouse (who spent ten years in the military) remembers distinctly Glenn speaking of the event decades ago. Sprouse says that a few years after the crash he had seen Glenn at a mutual friend’s funeral. Glenn brought up in conversation the base’s strange call inquiring about the child caskets.

7) Glenn’s close friend was Mollie Abramitis. Mollie recently related to me an extraordinary story. She was visiting New Mexico from her home in California in April of 1989. Glenn was managing the Wortley Hotel at the time. Glenn invited her and others for dinner. He then told a small group of close friends gathered at the hotel’s dining room that he had an important story to tell them. It had been troubling him for a very long time. He felt compelled and ready to share it with them. He said that he was worried that the story had “gotten out” and he was concerned about approaches for interviews about the subject. He told Mollie and the others assembled at the Wortley the precise ET story that he told publicly much later. Mollie said that Glenn appeared genuinely concerned, even frightened. An ex-police officer at the table beseeched Glenn that he must speak out publicly and tell all that he knows, that it would be the best form of “personal protection.” Glenn rarely drank.But this time, Mollie says, after he had told his astonishing story, Glenn partook of some liquid courage.

Glenn’s fraternal twin Bob Dennis (now deceased) was alway reluctant to discuss his brother’s story. John Price was Bob Dennis’ close friend. Bob explained to John that he was overseas in the military when the Roswell crash had happened. But his father told him about it when he returned from the service. Bob said that his father was very good friends with Sheriff Wilcox. He said that Wilcox and his Deputy (Tommy Thompson) did in fact come to the house and warned their father to make sure that Glenn says nothing of the event. It is likely that Glenn’s father was told much more about the crash event by his Sheriff friend. This is because Bob Dennis said that his father made him promise to never reveal any details about the event. Bob kept that promise to his death, always saying the it was Glenn’s story to tell.

9) The 1947 Roswell Fire Chief’s son was identified and contacted by me recently. Rue was living in the Roswell area at the time of the crash and knew Dennis, as did his father. He stated sparingly, and not wishing to elaborate, that “everything that Glenn says happened.”

GLENN’S MISSING NURSE - FOUND?

Glenn’s “nurse friend” has never been conclusively identified. Glenn did not provide researchers with her real name, if she existed. But then again…she just may have. Reexamination of old documents -and the confessions of a Roswell family- reveal that there are two very likely candidates:

Eileen (Adeline) Fanton was a 1st Lieutenant that was very briefly attached to the Roswell Army Airfield Station Hospital as a General Nurse- from December 26, 1946 until September 4, 1947.

According to military records Lt. Eileen Fanton (single) was 5′l” and 100 pounds, with dark hair and eyes and of Italian descent. Dennis described the nurse that he had known as “small like Audrey Hepburn, with short black hair, dark eyes and olive skin.”
· Fanton was a graduate of a Catholic academy and Catholic nursing school. Glenn said that his nurse was “raised as a strict Catholic.”
· Fanton is confirmed to have later served a tour duty in England. Dennis had mentioned England as (one of) the places he thought that the nurse may have relocated.
· Fanton was educated by nuns. Dennis has offered an alternate story that he had heard that the nurse had later become a nun. Fanton left the Roswell base weeks after her meeting with Glenn. She was admitted to a hospital for a reputed “D&C” abortion procedure. She retired from military service in 1955 and was never located to be questioned. She is believed deceased.

Ms. Miriam Bush

In July of 1947 Miriam Bush was a single 27 year old woman who (according to records and family) was employed by the Roswell base. Though not a “nurse”- she was a medical secretary in base hospital services.
· Like the “nurse” that Glenn described, Miriam was smallish and attractive, with black, short-cut hair and dark eyes.
· Glenn had offered the faked name of “Naomi Self” as the identity of his missing nurse. “Miriam” may well be an anagram of sorts for “Naomi.” Both “Miriam” and “Naomi” have the same length of letters, as do the last names “Bush” and “Self.”
· Amazingly (according to her brother George, her sister Jean and her sister-in-law Patricia) Miriam would arrive at her parents home one day after work in the Summer of 1947. She was tearful and in shock. She had described to her family a horrible event that had occured earlier that day. She was pulled into a base hospital room by a doctor who wanted her to be aware of something. She sickened as her eyes cast upon “little bodies” on gurneys in the middle of the room. These bodies were childlike but they were not children. They were strange- with massive heads and eyes that were not at all right. She told her family that she begged God to let her forget the sight.
· Traumatized, Miriam would flee New Mexico shortly thereafter and go to California where she remained for years without communicating with those back home. Alcoholic, Miriam would commit suicide at very end of 1989. 1989 is the very year that Glenn “went public” with his Roswell story.

GLENN’S TRUTH

Glenn has mixed misdirection with truth. He used storytelling devices to hide or obfuscate identities. His concern for protecting privacy was in conflict with his desire to get out the story. He saw others making money on the story and -ever the businessman- thought he’d profit some as well. He may have injected some imagination into history to awaken interest. Perhaps he did it to supplement a story where the real facts could not be obtained.

It could even be that Glenn was himself not the “involved” one, but was covering for another. Or it may be that his father had confided to Glenn the story that he had learned from friend Sheriff George Wilcox. It must also be remembered that flirtatious Glenn was a newlywed with an expectant and homebound wife at the time of the Roswell crash. His “relationship” with the nurse may have been more than casual- another possible reason for his evasiveness.

Whatever the case, there can be no doubt that there is a true -but hidden- “core story” somewhere to be found within Glenn’s fascinating tale.

Perhaps Kelly Abbott, Glenn’s grandson, sums the Roswell undertaker’s tale best: “While it’s true that his heart may have always been in the right place, his brain often got him in trouble. To many who’ve lived their lives and will die in Roswell, Glenn was their undertaker. Trust in him is a given. To those of us who know him better, the truth of the matter is far more complicated.”

ufocon.blogspot.com

In her day job as an archaeologist, Kathy Moskowitz Strain looks for traces of people who dwelt long ago in the Stanislaus National Forest.

At night and on weekends, she searches for something else: Bigfoot.

The legendary creature has fascinated Strain since she was a girl. The 40-year-old Jamestown resident has looked for Bigfoot evidence in Tuolumne County and beyond, and she has documented sightings by other people.

“Footprints, plus the traditional Native American stories about Bigfoot, have convinced me that something is out there,” she said.

Strain has spoken at Bigfoot conferences around the country and appeared on “MonsterQuest” on the History Channel.

She has just written a book that combines her interests in Bigfoot and Native Americans. The book, “Giants, Cannibals & Monsters: Bigfoot in Native Culture,” has more than 150 stories from the Arctic to Florida.

Strain, a Porterville native, has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from California State University, Bakersfield. She is married to Bob Strain, a retired Folsom firefighter, and has two sons, Zackary, 16, and Jacob, 11.

Q: How did you get interested in Bigfoot?

A: When I was a little girl, I saw “Legend of Boggy Creek” (a 1972 film) and became fascinated with the mystery. I later asked my teacher what I would have to do to study Bigfoot for a living, and she suggested anthropology, so that is what I did. However, I quickly learned that I couldn’t study Bigfoot for a living, so I work for the Forest Service by day and search for Bigfoot on my free time.

Q. What kinds of sightings have you documented?

A: I have interviewed hundreds of witnesses about their experiences of seeing either a Bigfoot or his large footprints in the woods. The sightings have ranged from up-close experiences to those that took place several hundred yards away. My favorite sightings are those that describe Bigfoot looking for food.

Q: Have you seen Bigfoot yourself?

A: I have never seen a Bigfoot myself, but my husband has.

Q:. How do you look for Bigfoot?

A: During the day, we spend a good deal of time driving the dirt forest roads, looking for footprints or other items of interest. We do a lot of mapping, taking notes and taking videos and photos of the location. Often, we stop at the local stores and see if anything unusual has been reported. After nightfall, we build a large fire and cook a fragrant dinner. We usually begin call blasting (recorded Bigfoot-like sounds) starting at 8 or 9 and blast on the hour, every hour. Throughout the evening, we conduct our experiments and record the responses.

Q: How many Bigfoots might there be in Tuolumne County and North America?

A: Some researchers have estimated as much as 2,000 throughout North America, and I would guess that is pretty close. In Tuolumne County, I’m guessing, there may be as many as 10 to 15.

Q: Describe your job for the forest.

A: I am the heritage resource and tribal relations program manager. The heritage part of the job deals with the forestwide management of prehistoric, ethnographic and historic sites. Under tribal relations, my job is to make sure that the forest is upholding our trust responsibilities with our local tribes and native people.

Q: Does your Bigfoot work ever intersect with your forest job?

A: I don’t “Bigfoot” on government time, but being an archaeologist/anthropologist has helped me apply scientific methods and tools to my Bigfoot studies. It also allows me to interact with Native Americans and record their traditional cultural beliefs of this animal.

Q: Do people take your research seriously?

A: I think so. Most of the time, people will ask me lots of questions and are interested in where the best place to go to see one is.

Q: Why are people fascinated by Bigfoot?

A: I think in today’s society, with so much technology and pressures on our time, it’s nice to think that there is still something left out there for us to discover — something still wild and free.

modbee.com/life/friendsfamily/story/546192.html

MYSTERIOUS panther-like creatures, long reported to be stalking the outskirts of Sydney, could be moving towards homes.

With at least 19 sightings reported this year, big cat hunters believe they’re becoming bolder as they search for food and mates.

Cryptozoologist Rex Gilroy said the elusive creatures - usually reported as fleeting sightings at night, often on lonely country roads - have been reported as far afield as Kenthurst, Lithgow, Penrith and Appin as they find migratory routes around Warragamba dam, linking breeding populations from the northwest to southwest via the Blue Mountains.

“They’ve become more active, males and females, in the past few weeks and months as they look to breed,” Mr Gilroy said.

Although there is no hard evidence the creatures exist, residents have become so frightened that the Department of Primary Industries has commissioned a report on the cats, due early next year.

“The DPI is currently putting together a report following recent concerns from residents living in the Grose Vale area,” a spokeswoman said. “The report will look at a range of options, as well as a review of the existing evidence.”

Grose Vale resident Chris Coffey, who operates a database that has recorded 330 sightings in the past decade, said she has seen a big cat the size of her 63kg rottweiler at least five times in her own backyard.

While the DPI received 19 formal reports of a “large black cat” in 2008, there had been an increasing flood of informal reports.

Mr Gilroy recently visited Burragorang Valley, where bushman Gavin Noakes found large paw prints bigger than a man’s fist at 12cm to 15cm wide.

The depth of the paw print suggested a heavy creature, in line with a number of recent sightings of a panther-like creature of about 30kg with a black-to-dark brown coat.

“There’s a migratory pattern in which they seem to come out of Grose Vale and penetrate out into the back of the Kenthurst scrub, moving back and forth,” he said.

“Two breeding populations of about half a dozen each have developed there.”

He believes they are distant relations of the extinct Thylacoleo carnifex owen, a marsupial lion that survived the Ice Age.

news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24844943-5001021,00.html

Lockheed “Skunk Works” former CEO knew the Roswell extraterrestial UFO influenced designs of Testor model kits for Roswell UFO models, and U.S. top secret aircraft. According to a CNI News report by Colorado resident Michael Lindemann, the design information was derived from forensic illustrations and numerous witness testimonies about the Roswell UFO, provided by William L. “Bill” McDonald.

In an e-mail, dated July 29, 1999, apparently addressed to Lindemann, McDonald referenced an excerpt of a discussion with Harold Puthoff, founder of the previously highly classified U.S. “remote viewing” program. McDonald said:

“Well Hal, you asked for it! Now that legendary Lockheed engineer and chief model kit designer for the Testor Corporation, John Andrews, is dead, I can announce that he personally confirmed the design connection between the Roswell Spacecraft and the Lockheed Martin Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAVs), spyplanes, Joint Strike Fighters, and Space Shuttles. Andrews was a close personal friend of “Skunk Works” CEO Ben Rich — the hand-picked successor of Skunk Works founder Kelly Johnson and the man famous for the F-117 Nighthawk “Stealth” fighter, its “half-pint” prototype the “HAVE BLUE”, and the top-secret F-19 Stealth Interceptor. Before Rich died of cancer, Andrews took my questions to him.

Dr. Ben R. Rich confirmed:

1. There are 2 types of UFOs — the ones we build and ones ‘they’ build. We learned from both crash retrievals and actual “hand-me-downs.” The Government knew and until 1969 took an active hand in the administration of that information. After a 1969 Nixon “purge”, administration was handled by an international board of directors in the private sector…

3. Nearly all “biomorphic” aerospace designs were inspired by the Roswell spacecraft — from Kelly’s SR-71 Blackbird onward to today’s drones, UCAVs, and aerospace craft…

7. It was Ben Rich’s opinion that the public should not be told [about ufos and extraterrestrials]. He believed they could not handle the truth — ever. Only in the last months of his decline did he begin to feel that the “international corporate board of directors” dealing with the “Subject” could represent a bigger problem to citizens’ personal freedoms under the United States Constitution than the presence of off-world visitors themselves.”

Lindemann added that “Bill McDonald received the above information from Andrews from 1994 until their last phone call near Christmas in 1998.” Lindemann also noted “It should also be known that Dr. Ben R. Rich attended a public aerospace designers and engineers conference in 1993 before his illness overwhelmed him in which he stated — in the presence of MUFON Orange County Section Director Jan Harzan and many others that – ‘We’ (i.e., the U.S. aerospace community/military industrial complex) had in it’s possession the technology to “take us to the stars”.

See the complete letter from John Andrews and the hand written reply from Dr. Ben Rich. Hear more revealing testimony from Disclosure Project whistleblowers. NASA can not deny secrets discovered by UK hacker Gary McKinnon and many astronauts if it expects full funding from the Obama White House administration.

examiner.com/x-2024-Denver-UFO-Examiner~y2008m12d23-CEO-of

NASA-contractor-Lockheed-knew-of-extraterrestrial-UFO-visitors

Cryptid cat sightings are a worldwide phenomena. For decades, there have been accounts of large black cats roaming the countryside of Great Britain. As well, recent mutilations of horses and livestock in Australia have prompted fear that undocumented large cats also dwell on the continent.

Over the past few years, there has been an increased number of large cat sightings recorded throughout the United States, especially in the mountainous regions. Most descriptions have been similar to those of cougars or panther-like creatures, large muscular felines with long tails. Though, many of the reports proved to be that of a large feral cat or an oversized pet.

Before European settlers set foot in North America, the native Cherokee tribes of Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia spoke of the fearsome Wampus Cat that roamed the land. This was said to be the result of a woman who had disguised herself in the skin of a mountain lion and spied on the men of the tribe as they sat around the campfire telling sacred stories on a hunting trip. When the woman was discovered, the tribe’s medicine man punished her by transforming her into a half-woman, half-cat. Supposedly, this creature still lives.

In the early 19th century, the Wampus Cat was reported to roam the Southern bottomlands and described as “. . . an impossibly hideous critter said to have the head of a man, the body of a wildcat only larger, and the soul of a demon.” The Wampus Cat was known to lurk along murky river bottoms and feast upon hapless hunters, fishermen and travelers and anybody else who wandered too far away from civilization. Wampus Cat stories and sightings became less and less frequent after the War Between the States.

Old American South books and newspapers state that “Wampus” was a name used for an unknown monster cat as well as other mystery animals. The word catawampus (cattywampus), which means “Cater-Cornered; slant wise, or Evil; malicious” in the American Heritage Dictionary, seems to be a neutral piece of evidence.

Last year, a reader from Knoxville responded to an inquiry I made concerning the Wampus Cat and other mysterious large cats:

“During the school year, my girlfriend lives in Strong Hall on the University of Tennessee campus. One night while we were at her place, I was talking about how I was walking back to my dorm (Greve Hall) with a friend of mine. I was beside him, but very slightly ahead. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw what appeared to be a man in a black cloak walk up to my friend and sort of lean into him, almost like he was going to put his hand on my friend’s shoulder. Only when his hand fell on my friend’s shoulder, he simply disappeared. I will admit that during this time I was a bit tired from studying for an exam, and my friend says he felt nothing, but that’s neither here nor there.”

“After telling my girlfriend this story, she told me that during the first week of school she looked out her ground-floor window toward the corner of 16th and Cumberland, and saw what appeared to be a human-sized cat walking on its hind legs, with glowing eyes. I don’t remember the details she gave me, as far as how long it was there or how long she saw it.”

“It should be noted that my girlfriend is from Minnesota and I have no reason to believe she would try to trick me by reading about the Wampus Cat and then trying to pretend she saw it. We’re very close and I have no reason to believe she would lie to me.”

Granted, this could have been a dorm party induced phantom, but I think the writer was serious. There are recent accounts of large cat sightings in the south that have an unusual twist.

Recently, an unknown predator mauled a pit bull and killed two puppies in Brunswick County, North Carolina and residents fear it’s the same animal that killed three dogs in September 2007. The county’s animal control agency investigated the animal’s tracks, droppings and other clues but couldn’t determine what attacked the dogs. Locals call the unknown animal the ‘Beast of Bolivia’. Some residents and experts said the predator may have been a wayward panther or cougar, or even a wolf because 3-inch paw tracks were found at the scene. There have been no reports of noise during the attacks which seems strange since this is a residential area. As well, the beast has never been seen.

In an earlier incident, a man was taking pictures of alligators in the North Santee River in South Carolina with a digital camera. Later when he returned home and looked at the images, he realized there was a black panther watching him. He stated that he never witnessed or heard the animal for the entire time he was at the river.

For years there have been stories of Black Florida Panthers prowling in our wilderness, but there’s never been any official record they exist.

A rare Black Bobcat was captured and researchers at the Busch Wildlife Sanctuary say they now know what people were referring to when they said they saw the panther.

“For years, people here in Florida have talked about Black Florida Panthers. First of all, Florida Panthers are basically a Cougar. There has never ever been a Black Cougar or a Florida Panther ever found. No record of them, no pictures, no hides, no skins, nothing. but still we hear these stories of black cats that lurk in the wilds of Florida. Maybe we have kind of found that missing piece of the puzzle and we now know what everybody’s been talking about when they say, ‘I saw a Black Panther in the wild.’ But really they saw a Black Bobcat.”

The sanctuary says they’ll be working with the state to run DNA and blood tests. They want to make sure there’s official documentation that the Black Bobcat exists… even if the Black Panther does not. The sanctuary plans to return the Black Bobcat to the wild.

Mystical cats or just wayward species? If there were no legends, the world would be much duller. Many people consider the Bigfoot or Sasquatch a legend or myth. I’d say just as many people consider the hairy hominid a fact.

naturalplane.blogspot.com/2008/12/cryptid-felines-of-southeast-america.html

Minnesota anthropology professor Kieran McNulty (along with colleague Karen Baab of Stony Brook University in New York) has made an important contribution toward solving one of the greatest paleoanthropological mysteries in recent history — that fossilized skeletons resembling a mythical “hobbit” creature represent an entirely new species in humanity’s evolutionary chain.

Discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, controversy has surrounded the fossilized hominid skeletons of the so-called “hobbit people,” or Homo floresiensis ever since. Experts are still debating whether the 18,000-year-old remains merely belong to a diminutive population of modern-day humans (with one individual exhibiting “microcephaly,” an abnormally small head) or represent a previously unrecognized branch in humanity’s family tree.

Using 3D modeling methods, McNulty and his fellow researchers compared the cranial features of this real-life “hobbit” to those of a simulated fossil human (of similar stature) to determine whether or not such a species was distinct from modern humans.

“[Homo floresiensis] is the most exciting discovery in probably the last 50 years,” said McNulty. “The specimens have skulls that resemble something that died a million years earlier, and other body parts reminiscent of our three-million-year-old human ancestors, yet they lived until very recently — contemporaries with modern humans.”

Comparing the simulation to the original Flores skull discovered in 2003, McNulty and Baab were able to demonstrate conclusively that the original “hobbit” skull fits the expectations for a small fossil hominin species and not a modern human. Their study was published online this month in the Journal of Human Evolution.

The cranial structure of the fossilized skull, says the study, clearly places it in humanity’s genus Homo, even though it would be smaller in both body and brain size than any other member. The results of the study suggest that the theorized “hobbit” species may have undergone a process of size reduction after branching off from Homo erectus (one of modern day humanity’s distant ancestors) or even something more primitive.

“We have shown with this study that the process of size reduction applied to fossil hominins accounts for many features seen in the fossil skull from Flores,” McNulty said. “It becomes much more difficult, therefore, to defend the hypothesis that the preserved skull is a modern human who simply suffered from an extremely rare disorder.

Public interest in the discovery, analysis and implications of Flores “hobbits” has been high ever since 2003, inspiring several television specials (including a recent episode of “NOVA” entitled “Alien From Earth”) and other media attention.

While the debate over Homo floresiensis will continue, McNulty believes this comprehensive analysis of the relationship between size and shape in human evolution is a critical step toward eventually understanding the place of the Flores “hobbits” in human evolutionary history.

“I think the majority of researchers favor recognizing this as a new species,” McNulty said about the categorization of Homo floresiensis. “The evidence is becoming overwhelming, and this study helps confirm that view.”

sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081217124418.htm

The report of a rare, white triangular shaped object in Australia is only one of many recent sightings in the down under country which was discussed at a UFO and Paranormal Research Society of Australia conference recently.

The unusual white triangle was witnessed over the Gosford area, which seems to be a hot spot for Australian UFOs. The object was reported as low flying, and totally silent. It moved as fast as a jet, eyewitness reports stated.

There is no doubt that the triangles are some of the most discussed unknown flying objects of the last three decades, and they are very often suspected of being top-secret, military projects. However, there is no definitive proof of this. Exhibiting maneuverability of what seems to be years ahead of our current technological status, an extraterrestrial connection is also a possibility.

ufos.about.com/b/2008/12/22/a-white-triangle.htm

Australian wildlife scientists have re-opened the cryptic case of the Tasmanian tiger, a marsupial carnivore that resembled a striped coyote and which was last seen alive more than 70 years ago.

Scientists think chances are slim that Thylacinus cynocephalus still roams remote areas of Tasmania, the large island just south of Australia, but they can’t help but turn over every possible leaf for evidence.

The last wild Tasmanian tiger was killed by a farmer around 1930, and the last captive died in 1936 at the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania’s capital. Fifty years later, the species was declared extinct.

The extinction marked the end of the family Thylacinidae, and of the world’s largest marsupial carnivore. The Tasmanian tiger weighed about 65 pounds, had a nose-to-tail length of six feet and had several vertical stripes running across its lower back and tail.

Despite the official extinction, rumored sightings of the creature have continued to emerge from Tasmania’s temperate forests.

Zoologist Jeremy Austin of the Australian Center for Ancient DNA and his colleagues are examining DNA from animal droppings, or scats, found in Tasmania in the late 1950s and 1960s, which have been preserved in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.

Eric Guiler, a thylacine expert who found the scats, told Austin the droppings probably came from a Tasmanian tiger rather than a dog or two common related marsupial carnivores — the well-known wolverine-like Tasmanian devil and the cat-like spotted quoll.

“If we find thylacine DNA from the 1950s scats it will be significant,” Austin said. “This would prove that either the thylacine produced the scat or a [Tasmanian] devil ate a thylacine and dropped the scat. Either way, that is proof that the thylacine was there at the time.”

If they were to find evidence the Tasmanian tiger was still extant in the 1950s, that would mean the beast was able to stay hidden from humans for at least 20 or 30 years.

“If they could survive this long with no real physical proof, then it does add a little more hope to the possibility that they could survive another 50 years without ever being caught, killed [or] hit by a car,” Austin told LiveScience. “This chance is of course not great, but the glimmer of hope is ever so slightly brighter.”

“We Still Receive at Least Two Credible Thylacine Sightings a Year”

A sighting of a thylacine near Cradle Mountain in Tasmania was recently reported. “I got a call the other day from two shooters near Cradle Mountain who had to have seen a thylacine, or they are lying,” Mr Mooney said. “They were probably spotlighting illegally so there doesn’t appear to be a motive for them to lie. The location was perfect and their description faultless.”

Tasmanian tiger sightings in Victoria has reignited the theory that the species may have been introduced to the mainland before it became extinct in this state.

Victorian farmer Harry Cook owns a property bordering the Otway Ranges south of Melbourne.

Late last year he was with a mate inspecting crop damage caused by rabbits when they spotted three wedge-tailed eagles circling the paddock.

“They were circling over an animal — we got within 12 foot of it. It was about the size of a large dog with a very long tail that was sticking straight up in the air as if it was fending off the wedgies,” Mr Cook said.

“There were white stripes on its chest and it had a boofy head with round ears and the side of the muzzle was white.”

He copped a lot of flak for reporting the peculiar sight, but not because no one believed him.

“Farmers around here told me I had broken the code of silence — that they had seen things too, but as soon as it is reported all the townies come with their rifles trying to shoot it.”

Mr Cook is not alone in experiencing such a sighting.

A former engineer, who did not want to be named, said he saw a dog-like animal in his headlights near Torquay in May 2006.

He described it in minute detail, from its slender body and fluid movements to the prison bar “salt and pepper” coloured stripes on its flanks.

“I can guarantee you there is a feral animal of some sort out there with short hair and stripes on the side; if someone says that description matches a tiger than I would say it is a tiger,” he said.

Amateur researcher Michael Moss has logged eight recent sightings near Geelong, in a triangle between Anglesea, Torquay and Freshwater Creek.

In November 1998 he videotaped what he claims was a thylacine in East Gippsland. The grainy footage can be found on YouTube.

Mr Moss has a theory that tigers were introduced to Wilsons Promontory between 1910 and 1915.

During that time the park’s committee of management had a policy of stocking the national park with endangered species including kangaroos, tiger quolls and birds.

“The timing is interesting because there are no records of tiger sightings until after 1912,” Mr Moss said.

“The tiger still had a reputation as a stock killer so the last thing the committee would want to do is publicise it for fear farmers would go and shoot them, so that could be one reason why it was kept quiet.”

Local wildlife biologist and thylacine guru Nick Mooney had heard the theory before and said it didn’t wash.

“There is no evidence whatsoever beyond a vague conspiracy. There were some animals released at Wilsons Promontory but tigers were not on the list,” he said.

He and other independent experts have examined Mr Moss’s footage and believe it to be a mangy fox carrying a rabbit. Most mainland sightings could similarly be dismissed as stray dogs, foxes or even illusions, because the last fossil record of thylacines on mainland Australia date back to 1000 years before white settlement.

But Mr Mooney, who works in the Tasmanian Government’s wildlife management branch, is by no means a sceptic about the tiger’s continued existence: “I have always said it is possible — not probable, but possible.”

Thylacine DNA Restored To Life

Australian scientists say it may one day be possible to bring the dinosaur back to life, after a world-first experiment with DNA from the extinct Tasmanian tiger.

Injected DNA from preserved Tasmanian tiger specimens was injected and brought back to life in a mouse embryo in the nine-year experiment conducted by Melbourne University zoologists Andrew Pask and Marilyn Renfree.

In results published in the international scientific journal PLoS One, the experiment proved the tiger DNA was able to grow cartilage and bone in the mouse, showing the extinct gene could be brought back to life.

Dr Pask said the same technique could now be used with other extinct species such as the dinosaur, mammoth and neanderthal, all of which scientists had large amounts of DNA available.

And he said while the technique could recreate only a single extinct gene, with technology advancing all the time, it could one day be possible to bring whole creatures back to life.

“I have no doubt the whole creature could be brought back to life in the future,” Dr Pask told AAP.

And he said creating combinations such as Pterodactyl wings on mice would also be possible.

“Yes it does, you could look at those combinations,” he said.

In the world-first experiment, DNA was extracted from baby Tasmanian tigers which had been pickled in alcohol at Melbourne’s Museum Victoria for a century.

The tigers were babies in their mothers’ pouches when they were killed and preserved.

Tasmanian tigers have been extinct in the wild for about 100 years, with the last one of its kind dying in captivity in Hobart Zoo in 1936.

The experiment with their DNA was conducted in Houston with University of Texas molecular genetics professor Richard Behringer.

Professor Renfree said the study proved for the first time it was possible to resurrect the function of an extinct gene.

“This study has proved you can use DNA material from extinct animals and see what function they have,” Prof Renfree said.

Prof Pask said as well as paving the way to recreate extinct species in the future, the research could also have potential bio-medical therapeutic outcomes.

“It gives us the ability to unleash the potential of extinct species,” he said.

The experiment linked the tiger’s DNA, the Col2a1 gene with a reporter gene, which showed the embryo’s developing legs and arms.

The scientists said this showed the tiger gene would have a similar function in developing cartilage and bone development as an equivalent mouse gene.

The embryo was not developed into a live mouse, but Dr Pask said the technique could be taken further in the future, similar to the way DNA from still-surviving species was currently used.

“I think people have been introducing new life into mice and genetically modified organisms for a long, long time,” he said.

“The only difference is this animal is extinct.”

But the scientists stressed the ability to resurrect single genes of extinct species did not make the growing number of extinct species any less of a concern.

“Absolutely not,” Prof Renfree said.

“The extinction of species is an enormous scientific concern, particularly in Australia where we have the worst record.”

She said while the research allowed the function of individual genes from extinct species to be revealed, it was still a long way from being able to bring that species back to life.

naturalplane.blogspot.com/2008/12/resurrecting-thylacine-does-it-exist-or.html

Chupacabras reports from the 1990s in Puerto Rico said they were upright furry primates. Could the accounts have been of escaped monkeys?

News is coming out of the island this week that released and escaped Patas and Rhesus monkeys, so on the loose for 30 years, are being killed and caught. Could they be the source of startled eyewitness accounts from thirteen years ago of Chupacabras?

The following Orlando Sentinel news item from Lajas, Puerto Rico, summarizes the story of the out-of-place monkeys, including an account of a Puerto Rican mountain lion.

The easy life is over for hundreds of monkeys — some harboring herpes and hepatitis — that have run wild through southwestern Puerto Rico for more than 30 years.

Authorities launched a plan this month to capture and kill the monkeys before they spread across the entire island, threatening agriculture, native wildlife and people. But some animal experts and the farmers who have complained for years about the rhesus and patas monkeys think it may be too late.

“I don’t honestly believe they will ever get rid of the patas monkeys in Puerto Rico,” said Mark Wilson, director of the Florida International Teaching Zoo, which has helped find zoos willing to take some of the animals. “They may go deep into the forest, but they will never go away. There’s just too many of them, and they are too smart.”

Monkeys caught in traps

At least 1,000 monkeys from at least 11 colonies populate the Lajas Valley. After a year of study, rangers began trapping them in cages about 10 feet long, baited with food and equipped with a trip lever. Two of 16 monkeys were released with radio collars for further tracking. Each of the others was killed with one shot from a .22-caliber rifle.

Officials determined shooting the monkeys was more humane than lethal injection, said Secretary of Natural Resources Javier Velez Arrocho. He said he regrets having to kill the animals but had no choice after scores of organizations rejected them.

Some of the monkeys were sent to a teaching zoo in Sumter County in 2007, and a troop of about 15 monkeys escaped earlier this year from a wildlife preserve near Lakeland.

No public protests

Animal treatment is a sensitive topic in Puerto Rico, which was in the spotlight last year after about 80 dogs and cats were seized from a housing project and hurled off a bridge. In May, a veterinarian confirmed that more than 400 racehorses, many in perfect health, are killed by injection in Puerto Rico each year. Both cases sparked widespread criticism. But the elimination of pesky monkeys has not spawned public protests.

“My personal opinion is that I would rather see them put to sleep than put through horrible experiments,” said Sally Figueroa, a board member of the animal-welfare group Pare Este in the eastern city of Fajardo.

Non-natives flourish

The scourge of non-native animals is particularly acute in Puerto Rico because of its lush climate and lack of predators. Several species of snakes, crocodiles, caimans and alligators — imported, kept as pets, then released into the wild — now flourish in more than 30 rivers, said Sgt. Angel Atienza, a ranger who specializes in exotic animals.

As Atienza spoke, his agents were investigating reports of a mountain lion running wild in hills near the small central town of Adjuntas.

Animal controls costly

The Lajas monkeys arrived in the 1960s and ’70s after escaping research facilities on small islands off the mainland. They adapted easily, fueled by plentiful crops.

The creatures cost about $300,000 in annual damage and more than $1 million in indirect ways, such as forcing farmers to plant less profitable crops that don’t attract the animals, according to an analysis by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other agencies. The monkeys are also blamed for a dramatic drop in the valley’s bird population.

Lacking resources, the Puerto Rican government has made only sporadic attempts to control the monkeys in the past. Last year, however, the island’s agricultural and wildlife agencies secured $1.8million from the territorial government, allowing them to track, study and begin trying to eliminate the Lajas Valley populations.

cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/chupa-pr-monkey