Trio of cougars killed after dog attacked

Bear habituated to people shot in Central Saanich

The unusual case of three young cougars all being shot and killed after attacking a dog near Port Hardy this week does not necessarily mean more of the animals have been coming close to populated areas, says a conservation officer, but the number of bear calls has jumped since last year.

“These three cougars had been seen on the reserve in Fort Rupert multiple times over the last two weeks,” said Sgt. Scott Norris of the B.C. Conservation Officer Service. “The north Island conservation officers were monitoring, hoping that mom was around.”

Then the trio, all of them emaciated, decided to go after the dog, he said.

“Their behaviour had been escalating and obviously they were starving,” Norris said.

“We’ve had this happen before — you get orphaned cougars and all they know is ‘I need meat and whatever is running around I’m going to go for,’ and, eventually, that’s going to be someone’s pet.”

Conservation officers determined it was an unsafe situation because there were so many people and pets in the vicinity, he said. Some thought was given to taking two of the cougars to a zoo in Vancouver, but that didn’t work out.

Norris said there have been about 310 cougar-related calls on the Island since April 1.

“I would say that’s probably fairly normal, it might be on the high side of normal.”

But he said the number of cougar sightings goes up dramatically in the summer, in part because they are spotted by people who are outside enjoying longer daylight hours.

There were two reports of a cougar stalking people and their pets at Royal Roads University in Colwood last week.

On Friday, Victoria police were looking for a cougar after a reported sighting on Plaskett Place in Esquimalt, but officers didn’t find anything.

Black bears have also been generating many calls, Norris said, largely because of human behaviour.

A bear was killed in Central Saanich on Friday afternoon after a conservation officer decided it had become habituated to residential areas.

“This neighbourhood and this area has had sort of a problem with habituated bears over the last month or so,” conservation officer Mark Kissinger told CHEK News.

“Unfortunately, when these bears decide not to go back into a green space or the wilderness, they continue to be habituated, getting into garbage and showing [themselves] during the day.”

The bear was seen wandering the Tanner Ridge neighbourhood before it climbed a tree and fell asleep. Kissinger said the bear was a three-year-old male and about 80 pounds underweight, due to eating poor food and living in an urban area.

Norris said people have a duty to lock up their garbage and other “food attractants.”

“The key thing is reminding people it’s their duty to lock their garbage up and their food attractants,” Norris said. “That’s the No. 1 reason we have bear calls and that’s the No. 1 reason we kill bears.

“A lot of people in the public totally get it but a lot of people in the public just can’t grasp the fact that they are the problem.”

Norris said it has been “extremely busy” for bear calls this year in the Sooke area, and that overall it is much busier for bear calls this year than last year on the Island.

There have been more than 330 bear-related calls in the past three months in Greater Victoria, he said. The total for all of 2016 was 417, while 2014 was considerably was higher with 621 calls.

The Island has had more than 1,070 bear calls this year with 11 having to be shot, Norris said.

The majority of cases involves measures like educating people or letting the bear leave the area and go back to natural food sources, Norris said.