One of the juvenile cougars that was conspicuously hanging around town last December was struck by a train earlier this month.
The young male—dubbed Cougar 191 by Parks Canada—was on the tracks near the Moberly Bridge rockcut, just east of town, March 2, when it was killed by a passing train.
“It’s sad,” said park biologist Mark Bradley. “We really wanted to give these guys the best chance they had of making a go of it.”
Since last year, Parks has been dealing with two juvenile cougars that wildlife specialists believe to be brothers.
They caused quite a stir in town, showing their faces everywhere from the dog park to the old high school site, and were eventually relocated to the eastern edge of the park, in an effort to protect them as well as the public.
Despite Parks’ efforts to disperse the cougars away from people, Cougar 191 returned to town in January, but unlike before, he managed to keep a low profile.
“As far as we know, 191 was doing fine,” said Bradley, noting that using GPS data from the cougar’s radio collar, Parks was able to keep tabs on him.
“We did get a bunch of locations from him from exactly the same spot for a number of days, so he must have been on a kill there.
“I think this is just kind of bad luck more than anything.
“It’s a really rare occurrence for a cougar to get hit by a train. It just seems that those two cougars didn’t have everything figured out. They didn’t know how to avoid people and this one at least didn’t know how to avoid trains, but it just could have been bad luck on his part, too.”
Bradley noted that the spot where 191 was killed is often frequented by bighorn sheep, and suggested that is likely the reason he was there.
“Coincidentally,” he added, “where 191 was killed was exactly where we caught his brother.
“It wouldn’t be too surprising if the brothers liked that spot because of the sheep.”
Bradley said he is hopeful that 191’s brother will live a longer, more successful life and noted that he seems to be adapting to his new turf east of town.
“He moved sort of part of the way back to town and then turned around and went all the way out to the border, so he’s been hanging out in that kind of eastern section of the park there, near Pocahontas, across the river.”
Parks monitors his whereabouts using a GPS radio collar that was put on when he was relocated.
Although 191 is now dead, Bradley noted that there are still cougars living around the townsite. They’re just evasive, he said.
“We want to remind people, when you leave the immediate townsite area, you should always be aware that there are predators around, cougars being one of them, and you should be taking the appropriate precautions.
“The odds of getting attacked are very small, but if you do the right things you can make that risk even smaller.”
Bradley suggested keeping children close, travelling in groups, keeping your dog on a leash and travelling during the daytime. He also recommends leaving the iPod at home if you’re going out on the trails.
“Otherwise you can’t hear animals,” he said.
Nicole Veerman
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