The story on our front page this week talks about a fairly bold cougar making the rounds in Langdale, snatching a cat from Mina Gibbons’ back porch while she helplessly watched, just steps away.
Gibbons called Coast Reporter with the story, saying she wanted to let the community know about the aggressive cat for their safety. However, she was, at first, hesitant to call the Conservation Officer Service (COS) to report the incident.
After a couple of days of debating what to do, she called the COS to report the encounter. Her hesitation came from not wanting the cougar to be hurt, but her concern for the community ultimately outweighed her concern for the cougar.
We’re thankful.
While we don’t like to see wildlife hurt, we hate to see people suffer. And a cougar that’s not afraid of humans and making its presence known in the daytime seems set to inflict human suffering.
We hope the COS catches this problem cat, or, even better, that the cougar decides to travel up into the mountains and move away from populated areas. That would be ideal.
There’s no option to catch and relocate a cougar, as they can travel such great distances. So the COS is left having to euthanize cougars deemed a danger to the public.
It’s sad and it’s distressing not only for the cougar-loving public but also for the COS. The conservation officers we’ve talked to say they got into the profession because they love the outdoors and appreciate wildlife, but their job includes protecting the public and responding to human wildlife conflicts when they arise.
Having to destroy an animal is not an easy job, and it comes with its fair share of public criticism. But consider the alternative.
Would you rather read a story about a cougar being euthanized or a child being attacked or killed by a cougar?
Cougars are beautiful and impressive creatures, but they’re wild animals that can easily take down a full grown deer for a snack and have been known to attack humans from time to time.
That being said, human deaths by cougars are rare. In the past 100 years, there have been 29 cougar attacks on humans reported in B.C. and five people have died as a result of those attacks.
It gives some level of comfort to know cougar attacks are rare, but “rare” leaves the door open to possibility, and a cougar that’s willing to come up onto a porch to snatch a cat while the owner is in sight can’t be called common.
