Cougars

Woman skier dies after cougar attack near Rocky Mountain tourist town

Wednesday, Jan. 03, 2001

BANFF, Alta. (CP) -- Park wardens believe a 30-year-old woman was killed by a cougar Tuesday while cross-country skiing in Banff National Park. RCMP said in a news release that the woman was skiing on a trail near Lake Minnewanka, a popular area about 10 kilometres from the Banff town site.
Park officials said the cougar was caught nearby and killed immediately. "At about 1:30, we got a report of a cougar that appeared to be on a body up near Lake Minnewanka and we responded immediately," said Ian Syme, the park's chief warden. "We are still at this point treating this as a probable attack. We haven't confirmed that the cause of death of the individual was in fact cougar inflicted, although we obviously have our suspicions." The victim was not identified but Banff Mayor Dennis Shuler said the woman lived in nearby Canmore. He did not want to release her name. Shuler said residents of Banff and Canmore were in a state of shock. "It's like somebody local that you know, that you skied with over the years, has run into an accident . . . similar to a fishing community where somebody drowns in a boating accident." There were two earlier sightings of cougars Tuesday around Banff but Shuler said he was told it's not likely the same animal was involved in all three incidents. "The information I have so far is that it appears to be healthy cougars and that is what is very unusual," said the mayor. "Most of the time when you hear about attacks usually it's in B.C. in the spring where they've starved over the winter and you hear of very unhealthy animals but these appear to be quite healthy animals so that's what's very, very unusual about it." About 7 a.m., a woman walking her dog in the town site was approached by a cougar. The woman called for help and some neighbours pulled her into their home. "Upon later investigation not too long after that it was found the cougar was defending a kill. It had taken down an elk not too far from where the lady was walking her dog," said Syme. Hours earlier a cougar attacked a dog left outside in its yard. The cat was scared off and the dog also ran off. Park officials were conducting DNA tests to find out more about the attacks. A tracking expert had also been called in. As well, park officials were warning residents of the Banff area to keep their pets inside, to walk on streets and to take dogs out on main roads in daylight hours. It was suggested that those who want to ski or hike on trails should go with a group. An Alberta biologist who researched cougars for 14 years as part of a field study southeast of Banff was concerned about how people might react to the attack, which he thought was the first fatality caused by a cougar in Alberta. "People shouldn't be afraid of going into the backcountry because of this spate of attacks," Martin Jalkotzy said in a telephone interview from his home in Calgary. "Yes, we should be aware always when we are in the bush and we should keep our wits about us but the likelihood of this kind of thing happening is very, very small." Jalkotzy said the fatal attack was a horrible situation but added it needs to be put in perspective. There are an average of 3-4 cougar attacks a year on average in North America, he said. "It's a horrible thing to have happen and there is a family that's now grieving. "But you are not going to make the place any better by trying to go out and shoot all the cougars around Banff because there are more cougars elsewhere and they will shift themselves around and there will be cougars (in Banff) again. "They are there because it's a good place to be." Syme called the fatal attack "extremely rare," adding there has never been a similar incident in any of Canada's national parks. In August 1996, Cindy Parolin was killed fighting off a cougar that mauled her six-year-old son near Princeton, B.C. Last April a male cougar was captured near downtown Nanaimo, B.C., and released into the wild several hours later. The incident followed a number of cougar sightings and an attack on livestock at an emu farm in Lantzville, B.C. In April 1999 an eight-year-old girl was bitten on the face and abdomen at a camp near Hope, 150 kilometres northeast of Vancouver. She was saved when a woman from her camping party beat off the animal with a stick.

Cougar Attacks Increasing in West
from the New York Times Online

Filed at 12:40 p.m. EDT
By The Associated Press

ISSAQUAH, Wash. (AP) -- When concerns about marauding cougars rise, wildlife experts offer reassurances: The typical cougar is a shy creature that avoids people and prefers to eat deer rather than pets or children.
So much for typical. Now consider the cougar that ate Wes Collins' dog:
It emerged from the forest behind the Collins house one evening in May and zeroed in on Sandy, the family's 50-pound Labrador mix. As two of Collins' children watched from the doorway, the cougar chased Sandy around the house and cornered her by the back deck.
Clamping its jaws around the dog's neck, the cougar dragged Sandy 50 yards into the woods. There it gnawed on her head and shoulder, buried the rest for later, and stretched out for a long nap.
That was enough to shake up the Collinses, but what happened the next day was what troubled state game warden Rocky Spencer. He and a hunter arrived with two hounds, pessimistic about their chances of tracking the cat. Collins' house sits on 5 acres outside Issaquah, where Seattle's suburban sprawl gives way to the forested Cascade foothills, so the cougar had plenty of escape routes to wilder country.
But this cat had no intention of fleeing. The hounds came across it just 100 yards into the woods, and the snarling cougar turned on the dogs with a fury that sent both back to the truck to lick their wounds.
Forty minutes later, hunter Ed Mahany returned with a friend and two fresh hounds. They figured that this time, surely, the cougar would have headed for the hills. Instead, the hounds found it just a few hundred feet away. Mahany's partner shot it, and the cougar, a 145-pound male, crawled off to die in a hollow stump that the neighbor's kids play in.
``I've had dealings with upwards of 100 mountain lions, and that was the most aggressive I've seen,'' Spencer said.
``This cougar wasn't sick or injured,'' Mahany added. ``It obviously didn't concern him to be around people, and dogs were just lunch.''
Once hunted nearly to extinction, cougars are on the rebound around the West. It's an ecological success story that's causing both celebration and nervous glances over the shoulder. Worries are growing that the secretive cougar, a.k.a. mountain lion, puma and panther, is getting too comfortable around the booming human population that now shares its habitat.
``We have a lot more people, a lot more mountain lions -- and a lot more encounters,'' said cougar researcher Paul Beier, an associate professor at Northern Arizona University.
Of the 10 fatal cougar attacks on people recorded since 1890 in the United States, half were in the past 10 years. Nonfatal attacks also are on the rise, as are reports of cougars preying on pets and livestock.
Being chewed by a cougar, or even seeing one in the wild, is still rare. But a recent string of attacks and close calls has forced Westerners to reconsider what is ``typical'' cougar behavior:
--A 6-year-old boy was jumped by a cougar on July 31 while hiking with about three dozen other campers on Marshall Mountain near Missoula, Mont. The cat pinned Dante Swallow with its paws and bit into his neck, but was pulled away by a camp counselor. The boy survived with scratches and puncture wounds. The cat slunk away and was later tracked down and killed.
--In Colorado, cougars have attacked three hikers in the past year, including 10-year-old Mark Miedema, killed last July in Rocky Mountain National Park. He had hiked a few minutes ahead of his family on a well-traveled trail; they arrived to see the cougar dragging him away.
--In Olympia, Wash., a cougar prowled a residential neighborhood for a week in April, hiding under blackberry bushes and preying on pets until wildlife agents tracked it down and shot it a few blocks from City Hall.
The list goes on: Since February, cougars have been spotted lounging on a porch in Villa Park, Calif., munching house cats near Kalispell, Mont., and wandering near an elementary school near Reno, Nev. In each case, the cougar was shot by officials fearing further problems.
With every encounter that hits the evening news, the jitter factor rises among the general populace, until sometimes it seems as if there's a predator behind every tree. Wildlife officials say they've received complaints of ``cougars'' that turned out to be deer, yellow Labrador retrievers or even house cats playing in the grass.
``There's a little public hysteria about this,'' Spencer said. ``That's not necessarily a bad thing. It gives us an increased chance to educate people about lions, so they can learn to live with them.''
But how, exactly, do you live with one of North America's most adaptable predators? A cougar can sprint 40 mph and leap 20 feet into a tree. With its great yellow eyes and keen nose, it can see and smell people coming long before they know the cougar is there.
Westerners have argued for years, with no consensus yet, over how to coexist with an animal that occasionally displaces humans at the top of the food chain.
In Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and New Mexico, recent complaints from ranchers and deer hunters about too many cougars prompted game officials to relax cougar-hunting rules.
The West's more urban coastal states, meanwhile, have grown more protective of the big cats. Washington voters banned the use of hounds for recreational cougar-hunting in 1996, the same year that Oregon voters rejected a challenge to their state's ban on hounds.
In California, a ban on all sport hunting of cougars has helped to double their numbers since 1972 to the present estimate of just over 5,000 animals. Even after cougars killed two California hikers, voters rejected a 1996 proposal to reinstate hunting.
``People have a more holistic approach to sharing the land, not just with cougars but with bears and other animals once considered varmints,'' said Brooks Fahy, executive director of the Predator Defense Institute in Eugene, Ore. ``I think people like knowing these animals are out there.''
Even in cougar-friendly California, however, there are limits to interspecies goodwill. Hunters note that an average of 100 ``problem'' cougars are killed each year in California -- about twice the number killed annually by hunters before the 1972 ban.
Are cougars becoming bolder in the absence of hunting? Many hunters, and some game officials, believe that's the case. But Fahy disputes that theory, saying the dramatic rise in both cougar and human populations explains the increase in encounters.
There's also no evidence that hunting puts the fear of people in mountain lions, Fahy says. He points to British Columbia, which has the continent's highest rate of cougar attacks despite heavy hunting.
Beier, the Arizona researcher, said he wouldn't expect hunting to noticeably reduce the number of cougar attacks unless the killing reached a level not allowed since the early 1960s, when bounties were paid for dead cougars.
Even that drastic step, unlikely given today's sympathy for predators, would not stop the march of homes into the West's wild hills nor divert the flood of visitors into the region's parks.
Three years have passed since Wes Collins moved his family into their house in the woods. Until the cougar attack in May, they enjoyed the parade of wildlife from their back door.
Now the four children, ages 8 to 14, are not allowed to play alone outside. Collins bought a can of pepper spray, and he cleared trails out back ``to make our presence known,'' he said.
Collins said he likes wildlife, but he values the safety of his children more. He'd like to see Washington rescind its new ban on hunting cougars with hounds.
``You either control the population of cougars or start killing humans,'' Collins said. ``There's not enough room for both of us to survive.''

Rescue Attempt Fails to Save Family Dog from Cougar Attack

By L. D.

Friday, September 1, 2000

This is a true story, it did happen to us Friday, September 1, 2000, Sequim, WA. (up at the cabin).
It was about 8:30 p.m. I was down cleaning the brush along the driveway with a machete. Prince, my toy poodle, was just nosing around like little dogs do, not getting too far from me. He was always looking to me for protection, from the bigger dogs and other people that scared him. He had made it to the end of the driveway and came back acting a little scared, but he was so little, it didn't take much to make him run back to my feet for protection. I saw him do this and kind of laughed at him a little and went back to cutting brush.
I looked at him again to see where he was. Just then I saw a cougar on a full run coming at me. Before I could even move to react, he grabbed my poodle dog, Prince, picking him up with his teeth right around the middle of his back, taking the biggest part of him into his mouth.
The cougar continued running on up the driveway with Prince in its mouth and ran right into my wife, Margie, and my other dog, Pepper. Pepper is a 13 year old Cocker Spaniel that is not in the best of health, but she went on the attack and went after the cougar.
The cougar turned around and wanted to come back towards me, but saw that I was coming at him swinging my machete and yelling at him, trying to rattle him so he would drop the dog and run off. He was determined to keep Prince and turned again and went up a cedar tree with the little Poodle in his mouth.
The tree was in the yard between Margie and myself. I could just see him, up there about 40 feet off the ground. He was looking down at me with a look as if to say, "Now what are you going to do". He did not like looking me straight in the eye's. I could see it made him want to get behind the tree from me.
I asked Margie to go for my hand gun because it was all I had with me. I kept the cougar in the tree by swinging the machete around. The dog was still alive for a little while but I heard the Cougar kill him just to get him to stop making noise.
Margie came with the gun. I got under the tree and found a place where I could shoot between the telephone and the power wires that ran to the house. I shot him twice in the chest, I was shooting at his heart. He then went around the tree and I shot again and missed him. This time I was shooting at his head. He then dropped Prince and leaped out of the tree straight at me. He landed across the power and phone lines and bounced back up again. I shot him three more times in the chest. This brought him off of the wires to the ground at my feet, less then 18" from me. At point blank range, I shot again hitting square in the right front shoulder, straight in line with his heart. But he turned again and somehow found the strength to keep moving away as I was shooting as fast as I could, recover from the last round kick back and fire again until a house came into view in line with the cougar.
At this point I had to stop shooting. I could not take a chance of hitting the house next door or someone inside the house. I had to let him get away. The cougar then ran straight away and into the woods towards the neighbors house. Darkness was coming on fast now, I only had two rounds left and a dim flashlight. I wanted to go after him as fast as I could but by the time I was able to reload and get back to the point where he went into the woods it was too dark to be hunting him down by myself. The brush was around 40" high and thick as hell. I decided to wait for the game department to show up and maybe the cougar would bleed out before they would get here and he would die.
I went to check on Prince, to see if there was a chance I could do something for him. It was too late, he was lifeless and limp, not moving, not breathing. I talked to him for a minute or so, in case he could hear me say good-bye. Good-bye to a friend and what a friend he had been to me. The little guy didn't deserve to die like this. He was a household pet, not living in the wild he had no chance to defend himself, as nature would have had it.
It took an hour for the Dept. Of Game to show up. I called the neighbors that I had phone numbers for to warn them about the wounded cougar that was still running about. George, the neighbor from the house across the street came over to help but was unarmed. We had started with two flashlights looking in the thick brush and found a big blood trail. We followed it a short distance and had just lost it when the Game Dept. arrived. Just after the first truck, a second Game Dept. truck arrived as well, with two more wardens.
Now there was five of us. The Game Dept. had much bigger and brighter lighting. It was much easier to see and to follow the blood trail with the bigger lights. One of the wardens had done this before, I could tell that right away. He was look and seeing the blood faster than the rest of us. He broke out in front and lead the way.
It only took a few minutes and a short distance to find what we were looking for, that being a dead cougar. He had only made it about 50 yards before dying beside a big fir tree. He may have tried to climb and died and fell out of the tree, it was hard to tell. Besides, I didn't care at that point as long as he was dead. The neighborhood was safe from that wounded cougar.
I went to get my video camera to film the dead cougar. The Game Dept. did not let me have the hide to have mounted. I was told they had rules and laws that stopped them from letting me have the cougar. Instead, I have one hell of a memory of what he looked like looking down at me. But him leaping out of the tree straight at me is a sight I will remember forever. One thing for sure, he was one fast killing machine. That is all a cougar is, a killing machine. He was shoot with a 40 cal hollow point slug out of a Sig 229 hand gun . I had one in the pipe and ten in a clip. When it was all over is still had two rounds left and he was out of sight that quick. He had six 40 caliber rounds in the chest and still ran 50 yards before dying, believe it or not. I was living under a lucky star that day I would dare to say.

Cougar attack
By Beth DeFalco

The Arizona Republic�
May 1, 2000

A father's protective instinct saved his 4-year-old daughter's life when a mountain lion attacked her during a weekend outing at Bartlett Lake, authorities said Sunday.�
"He did everything right. He never gave up and never stopped fighting," said Kevin Bergersen, a field supervisor for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. "He went after it like a parent."�
The rare attack occurred when Victoria Martinez was chasing bugs outside her family's tent Saturday night. The mountain lion clawed her, bit her on the back of the neck and dragged her 15 yards through the brush, Maricopa County Sheriff's Sgt. Don Rosenberger said.�
Victoria's parents and 7-year-old brother were inside their tent when they heard her scream. Her father, Richard, sprinted from the tent and started yelling and throwing stones at the 160-pound lion until it dropped his daughter and ran away, Bergersen said. �
The girl was airlifted to Phoenix Children's Hospital, where she was listed in good condition Sunday after undergoing surgery. Hospital officials expected Victoria to make a full recovery. Her family would not comment.�
Only two other non-fatal mountain lion attacks have been reported in the state in the past 20 years, according the Arizona Game and Fish Department.�
After scaring off the lion, the girl's parents flagged another camper and drove Victoria to a sheriff's office station at the lake, which is about 18 miles east of Cave Creek.�
Martinez, the girl's father, lead deputies to the campsite. Less than an hour after the attack, authorities spotted the lion sitting at the spot where it dropped Victoria.�
"As I looked into the spotlight, I saw two orange eyes looking back at me," Bergersen said.�
Wildlife officers then shot and killed the animal. It tested negative for rabies.�
"Apparently, it is not uncommon for a mountain lion to return, knowing that it had injured its prey," Rosenberger said. "Given the fact that this happened, this mountain lion would most likely continue to attack the public and anything else that got in its way."�
"The Martinezes did everything right and had a profound perspective on the attack," Bergersen said. "When his son asked why this happened, Mr. Martinez told him, 'We're in his house.' "�

Mountain lion killed after charging group

Associated Press, 01/01/98 23:29

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, Calif. (AP) - Aggressive mountain lions forced authorities to ban children from a wilderness park in this Southern California town for 11 years.
Now, just two weeks after that ban was lifted, a hissing, snarling mountain lion circled within an arm's length of a group of women and children.
A warden shot the lion dead the same day, after some 75 park visitors had been evacuated.
``We have to decide if this is going to be a park for children to play in or a park for mountain lions - the two are not compatible,'' said Orange County Supervisor Charles Smith, adding that he will try to reinstate the ban on children at the Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park.
No one was injured when the female mountain lion circled the group last Sunday. The lion retreated after one of the women tossed a child's hiking boot at it.
Ranger John Gannaway said it was the first such incident at the 7,600-acre park since a cougar mauled two small children there in 1986, resulting in severe injuries to one child, a lawsuit and a $1.5 million damage award against the county. The park was later closed to minors and only reopened Dec. 16.
``It's pretty scary,'' Gannaway said. ``I think it's very ironic with the timing. It's been 11 years since anything remotely close to this has happened.''
County Supervisor Tom Wilson, who voted to reopen the park, said the incident hasn't changed his mind.
``It is just a coincidence,'' Wilson said. ``There aren't any more sightings in Caspers than there are in other wilderness areas. You can't close a wilderness area to animals or to people. They can coexist.''
The lion's body was sent to a state laboratory to be tested for disease or some sign of physiological problems that could account for its behavior.
A brief examination of the animal when it was shot showed that it was physically fit, well nourished, had no signs of disease or injury and was not producing milk. Protection of cubs has often been cited as a reason for aggressiveness among female lions.
c.1997 Globe Newspaper Company

Back to Main Page