4 young cougars put down after sighting near Cranbrook school: Mother released

Four young cougars were put down earlier this week after they were caught eating a deer near a Cranbrook school.

Conservation officers were called on Sunday morning after a mother cougar had killed a deer during the night. The four young cougars were then seen eating the deer near the school grounds.

“As we arrived we soon discovered that there was multiple cougars present, which suggested a family unit,” said Jared Connatty, a conservation officer in Cranbrook. “We deployed our service hounds, and in a very short time, treed and captured four juveniles in very close proximity to Parkland Middle School, the residential area surrounding Parkland Middle School and Elizabeth Lake walking trails.”

Connatty said at that point they were able to assess the cougars and decide what to do.

The decision was made to have them put down.

“We needed to destroy those four juveniles and the reasoning behind that is their age and their location,” said Connatty. “At seven, eight months old…they’re learning how to hunt, they’re learning off mother, and they’re experiencing different things and a lot of natural sensors are kicking on, such as the natural urge to hunt, and that switch sometimes turns on.”

“So as a result, being so close to the school, we have a lot of kids, heavily used area, and we felt in order to ensure public safety at that site, we needed to put those cougars down.”

He said the deer is a natural prey for the cougar, but this was in an unnatural place for them to be killing and eating it, and they were concerned that would become learned behaviour for the young ones.

“Safety is our number one priority, and that was the deciding factor into destroying the four juveniles from that site,” said Connatty.

Neighbours in the area seem to agree with conservation’s actions.

“I got a six-year-old granddaughter that plays out in the yard, kind of makes me a little nervous to know the big cats are around that close,” said Colin Carlyle, who lives near the school. “A little kid like that wouldn’t stand a chance.”

He said they are seeing more and more wildlife coming into the city, when they never used to before. “There’s elk in town where there never used to be elk, there’s deer, there’s coyotes…we’ve had a few bears in town, now we’ve got the big cats in town,” he said.

Connatty said there have not been more cougar sightings than normal this year.

The mother was released on Sunday and came back that night to where the deer was killed, but the carcass had been removed.

Conservation then caught her again and put a GPS collar on her. “The reasoning for that is she’s demonstrating normal, natural behaviour in an unnormal natural place, being that she’s eating deer, preying on deer, but just doing it kind of inside the limits of the city,” said Connatty.

They are continuing to monitor her movements.

“It was a very difficult decision as a conservation officer to put down and destroy four anything, anything of that matter, but in this case, four juvenile cougar that we had to deal with,” added Connatty.