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She has asked to remain anonymous, but recognition is required for any supermom who fights off a cougar that’s mauling her 5-year-old son.

Her weapon: a metal water bottle.

The attack occurred Sept. 2 on the Silver Creek portion of the hiking trail to Abercrombie Mountain, northwest of Metaline Falls.

The family, visiting from Rossland, B.C., had spread out a bit. The father and daughter were ahead followed by the mother and the son, who was lagging less than 20 yards behind her, according to Washington Fish and Wildlife Department enforcement supervisor Mike Whorton.

The cougar sprang out of the only patch of cover along that stretch of trail, investigating officers reported.

“The mother was just picking up the water bottle her husband had left on the trail for her when she saw her son go to the ground out of the corner of her eye,” Whorton said.

“She immediately ran over and began hitting the cougar with the stainless steel bottle. She was there so fast the cougar didn’t have a chance to get a death grip on the boy’s neck. The claw marks on his chest indicated the cougar was still trying to turn him into position to get a good hold.”

The mother beat the cat – estimated at 80 pounds – hard enough to make it release the boy. But the cougar retreated only a few feet and looked back.

The mother threw the water bottle.

There was no radar to record the speed or umpire to call the accuracy, but she had enough stuff on that bottle to persuade the cougar to sprint downhill and disappear into the timber.

Steeee-rike!

The boy is healing with no complications from the teeth and claw marks to his head and chest, the family told Whorton.

A hunter with hounds had no luck in tracking down the offending cougar last weekend.

Fish and Wildlife officials issued the hunter a three-day kill permit.

“That’s basically all we can do,” Whorton said. “At this point, if we found a cougar in the area we’d have no cause to believe it’s the cat that took down the child.”

The incident emphasizes a precaution wildlife experts preach to families heading into cougar or wolf country.

Kids should be kept close and between adults as much as possible. Cougars and wolves in particular are known to key in on the smallest and most vulnerable prey in a flock, and that means children.

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A 5-year-old boy from Rossland, B.C., was attacked by a cougar Wednesday while he and his family were hiking a trail in Stevens County.

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife officers said the attack occurred while the boy and his family were hiking on the Abercrombie Mountain trail along Silver Creek in the Colville National Forest.

The boy’s parents told wildlife officers that the boy was treated for head wounds at Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital in Trail, B.C. He was expected to recover completely, they said.

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BILLINGS, Mont. – Wielding his chain saw as a weapon, a Colorado man says he fought off a starving mountain lion that attacked him while he was camping with his wife and two toddlers in northwestern Wyoming.

Dustin Britton, a 32-year-old mechanic and ex-Marine from Windsor, Colo., said he was alone cutting firewood about 100 feet from his campsite in the Shoshone National Forest when he saw the lion staring at him from some bushes.

Britton revved his 18-inch chain saw and tried to back away. But the 100-pound lion followed.

As the animal pounced, the 6-foot-tall, 170-pound Britton raised his saw and met it head-on — a collision he said felt like a grown man running right into him.

“It batted me three or four times with its front paws and as quick as I hit it with that saw it just turned away,” he said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

Britton later discovered he’d inflicted a six- to eight-inch gash on the lion’s shoulder. He said he was surprised the damage wasn’t worse.

“You would think if you hit an animal with a chain saw it would dig right in. I might as well have hit it with a hockey stick,” he said.

The wounded animal retreated, leaving Britton with a only small puncture wound on his forearm.

The attack occurred Sunday evening at a campsite 27 miles west of Cody. Wildlife agents shot and killed the lion Monday after it attacked a dog brought in to track the animal.

Authorities say the lion was in poor physical condition and appeared to be starving. The lion was 4 to 5 years old.

Mountain lions are considered reclusive by nature and officials said the circumstances of the attack were highly unusual. Wyoming officials have documented only eight cases of mountain lions acting aggressively toward humans over the last decade.

After Britton’s confrontation, he and his wife, Kirsta, decided to stay the night in their pop-up camper with their two children rather than risk packing up with the lion still on the loose.

The next morning he told a passing U.S. Forest Service employee about the incident and that’s when wildlife agents were called.

Tests for rabies and other diseases came up negative, but officials said they were continuing to analyze the animal for other potential diseases.

“It’s very, very rare” for lions to attack, said Wyoming Game and Fish spokesman Warren Mischke. “We’re still trying to investigate why this lion would behave this way.”

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ELK RIVER, Idaho – A Moscow man reported being attacked by a mountain lion while he was camping near Elk River over the weekend and state wildlife authorities are searching for the cat.

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game says the man was pounced on by a mountain lion while he was gathering firewood Saturday.

The man and lion rolled down a hill while struggling and came to a stop when they hit a log. The man says he stabbed the lion in the side with a knife and the lion ran off.

The man returned home and notified authorities. Conservation officer Barry Cummings is investigating. He and the man returned to the area Sunday morning along with local hound hunters, who were unable for find the lion.

The man did not want to be identified.

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Conservation officials in B.C.’s central Interior are praising a mother who saved her young son from a cougar attack in a popular hiking area.

At approximately 4 p.m. Saturday, a mother and her two children were enjoying an afternoon hike near Pinnacles Provincial Park, just outside the city of Quesnel.

Officials say the cougar pounced suddenly on a seven-year-old boy, who was walking just ahead of his mother and little brother.

“He turned to look back at his mother and the cougar jumped on his back [and] knocked him to the ground,” said conservation officer Mike Krause.

“[The] mother, of course, immediately rushed in. The cougar saw the mother coming and immediately broke off the attack and … ran off.”

Another hiker stepped in and helped the family get away.

The little boy needed stitches for scratches to his cheek, ear and back, Krause said, adding, “Anybody that gets attacked by a cougar is lucky to come away with minor injuries.”

Rare incident

The park, approximately 120 kilometres south of Prince George, remained closed Wednesday while officials worked to track and capture the animal with snares and traps.

The attack and response happened so quickly, Krause said, the mother wasn’t able to give any details about the cougar, such as size or age.

Krause said officials don’t know why this cougar attacked, but they are praising the mother of the victim.

“She did what mothers will do and that’s protect their children … without hesitation,” Krause said.

Cougars are common in the area, he said, but attacks are rare.

“Particularly in the Quesnel area, this is the first recorded cougar attack on a human. It’s very rare.”

The family has asked that their name not be released.

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Mom pulls three-year-old daughter from cougar’s grasp in Squamish

BY REBECCA TEBRAKE AND DARAH HANSEN, VANCOUVER SUNJUNE 17, 2009 9:08 PM

METRO VANCOUVER — When Maureen Lee took her three-year-old daughter Maya salmonberry-picking along the Squamish River, she thought it would be a peaceful break from a day of packing for her family’s move to Mexico this weekend.

They were on a trail in Fisherman’s Park — about five minutes from their home in Squamish’s Brackendale neighbourhood — when Lee noticed movement in the bushes.

She thought it was a dog, but quickly realized it was a cougar.

The cat jumped onto Maya, pinned her in a fetal position and gripped her head with its claws, Lee said Wednesday, recounting the Tuesday evening attack.

“I just knew I had to get between them.”

Lee somehow wedged her slight frame between her daughter and the 80-pound male cougar, pushing him off Maya as she stood up. She grabbed Maya and ran.

“It was pure adrenalin and instinct,” Lee said. “I don’t think it was until I started running that the fear kicked in.”

As they ran, Maya, bleeding from her head and arm, kept repeating, “A bear got me. A bear got me.”

Lee didn’t turn back until she reached the safety of her neighbour’s house, who helped her stop Maya’s bleeding.

“Amazing,” Maya’s father, Pablo Espinosa, said of his wife’s actions. “I don’t know what I would have done.”

An ambulance took Maya to Squamish General Hospital where cuts on the right side of her head and her upper left arm were stitched up.

She appeared in good spirits Wednesday, even asking her mom to take her back down to the site of the attack.

“She’s very brave, but I can tell she was a bit shaken,” Lee said of Maya’s reaction to the visit. “I don’t want her to be afraid of the forest. I don’t want her to be afraid of picking berries. I want her to understand that this was a unique situation.”

The cougar drama will not change the family’s plans to relocate to Mexico on the weekend, she said.

Around 10 p.m. Tuesday, five conservation officers aided by five dogs found and killed the 18-month-old adult male cat that is suspected in the attack.

Squamish conservation officer Chris Doyle said from the animal’s outward appearance it appeared to be in good condition. However, a full necropsy has been ordered to help determine why the animal acted as it did.

Conservation officers continued to scout the neighbourhood with dog teams on Wednesday.

B.C. is home to about 4,000 to 6,000 cougars, but sightings of the elusive wild cat are “really, really unusual,” said Kyle Knopff, a PhD student at the University of Alberta who studies cougar behaviour. “In general they avoid people,” he said.

But Squamish has recently recorded an alarming spike in the number of encounters. In the past week and a half, Doyle said, 30 cougar sightings have been reported in the district, up from an average of two sightings over such a period.

Two dogs were attacked in separate incidents along the popular Chief Trail earlier this month. One of the dogs was killed when the cougar dragged it from its leash and carried it up a tree. The second dog was rescued by its owner.

In that case, conservation officers shot and killed a young female cougar, also about a year to 18 months old.

According to Doyle, that animal was in very poor health.

“It appeared she hadn’t fed for a while,” he said.

It’s not unusual for conservation officers to kill a cougar if the animal’s behaviour is deemed significantly abnormal or if the encounters reach a “high level of conflict,” Doyle said.

“If they are not in conflict, they are fairly secretive,” he added.

The high number of sightings has raised concern among Squamish residents, who’ve been told to stay alert on wooded trails and paths, and use particular caution when out with young children and pets.

Lee said she had heard about the cougar attacks on dogs and her mom had called her Tuesday morning to warn her — a warning that came back to haunt her as she ran to safety cradling Maya in her arms.

“As I was running, I thought of that. My mom’s going to kill me,” Lee said.

Neighbour Kelsey Wright said residents were walking around carrying cans and sticks to make noise with after the attack Tuesday night.

“It definitely makes you feel a little uneasy, but you can’t live your life in fear because of a cougar attack,” Wright said.

Kris Mazzotti, who lives a few doors down from Lee and Espinosa, taught her four-year-old son Joel what a cougar is and how to act if he sees one.

Mazzotti told Joel to be calm and not to run away, but she admits she would probably pick up her kids and run.

Some residents blame Olympics-related residential development in the area for the recent cougar problems.

“What is happening here was so predictable,” said Brian Vincent, a Squamish resident and communications director for an Oregon-based wildlife advocacy group, Big Wildlife.

“This was a sleepy little town for the longest time and didn’t have this problem. But because of the Olympics and all the construction for the Sea to Sky Highway and the rampant and uncontrolled housing development into wildlife habitat, these animals have become stressed,” he said.

Vincent urged local authorities and residents to avoid whipping up hysteria about the big cats.

However, Doyle said there are a number of reasons for the increase in cougar sightings, none of which have to do with development.

He said the cougars may be reacting to variations in the location and abundance of prey species, or it might be simple population dynamics.

The sightings and attacks may also be the result of young cougars leaving their mothers, he said.

He noted the recent sightings have all occurred in established residential or recreational areas, not in newly developed areas.

Knopff speculated that the two cougars that were killed were possibly siblings who came into the town limits in search of easy food. Young cougars, he said, “are definitely less effective predators. There is a learning curve, for sure.”

Knopff said spotting a cougar in its natural habitat is not cause for alarm, even if the animal is seen repeatedly.

However, a cougar that repeatedly approaches people in a threatening way, attacks pets while people are present, or attacks people is “certainly a problem.” “Such cougars must be dealt with,” he said.

According to Knopff, if you are attacked by a cougar, the best way to deter the animal is to aggressively fight back.

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Girl attacked by cougar in Brackendale, B.C.

Source: CBC News

Posted: 06/16/09 10:40PM

Filed Under: Canada

A three-year-old girl was attacked by a cougar in Brackendale, a community in the northern part of Squamish, B.C., early Tuesday evening.

Squamish is 60 kilometres north of Vancouver.

A helicopter evacuation to a Vancouver hospital was initiated, but later it was decided her injuries could be treated at the local hospital in Squamish.

RCMP Cpl. Dave Ritchie said the girl, who was attacked in Fisherman’s Park at 7 p.m. PT., is expected to recover.

The attack comes after conservation officers in the Squamish area warned hikers to keep an eye out for the large cats.

There were six attacks last Friday alone, including two on dogs. One dog was killed by a cougar, which was later destroyed by conservation officers.

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This is just fascinating to me, since I live within the range on the map – and frequently hike in this area. To think there are only 7 mountain lions in this whole vast area… no wonder I’ve never seen one.

Map: Where the Mountain Lions Live in the Santa Monica Mountains

View a high resolution version of this map here | Courtesy of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, National Park Service

Since 2002, the National Park Service has been tracking Mountain Lions in the Santa Monica Mountains, studying their movements, pinpointing their ranges and observing how human development impacts their population. Twelve have been tracked in that time with some remarkable finds.

In March, one tagged and collared in the Simi Hills last December made his way across the 101 freeway in the Liberty Canyon area, causing excitement through the Park Service. This was big news for Wildlife Ecologist Seth Riley, who is in charge of tracking them because it was the first time since the program began that one had crossed the 101 Freeway. Unlike the 118 Freeway between the Simi Hills and Santa Susana Mountains, where they can cross with ease via a tunnel for hikers, the 101 provides no such linkage.

“This is an area we’ve been concerned about for a long time,” explained Riley of LIberty Canyon. “It is the last place along the 101 where there’s natural habibat on both sides of the freeway, the last place with effective wildlife activity.”

Basically, if strip malls and housing tracts were to come to the area, it could be devastating to the ecosystem. Broadscale connectivity is important for species and habitat, especially in light of climate change, which can prompt ranges for animals and plants to shift. If they can’t shift, there’s a potential for extinction at the local level and sometimes across the board as with the threat to Joshua Trees.

Even with the development now, the Santa Monica Mountains, Simi Hills and Santa Susana Mountains are not big enough for the estimated seven lions–some tracked by collars, some not–living among them. Depending on their sex, ranges should be 150 to 400 square kilometers, mostly independent of each other, but in the Santa Monicas it is not surprising to see them overlapping, which has its own effects including fights to the death over territories and a potentially lower food supply.

The technology used to track the lions is improving fast. Today, the collars send GPS signals to a satellite that are downloaded at park headquarters in Thousand Oaks. They get a handful of locations every 24 hours, one during the day and one every two hours at night, when they are most active. But the more pings they get, the faster the batteries die.

“Getting animals and changing collars is not a simple task,” said Ray Sauvajot, Chief of Planning, Science and Resource Management for the Recreation Area. If a collar change is needed, rangers try to use a back up VHF signal on the collar and traps set in remote locations are checked daily.

The tracking of each cat tells a different story, although their lives are all intertwined. Here’s a break down of each:

P1: For all purposes, he’s the king of the mountain and happened to be the first tagged Mountain Lion in the mountains. He mated with P2, who gave birth to four cubs (P5, 6, 7 and back in 2004. He was thought to be dead back in March of this year after a bloody fight with an non-collared lion, but scientists a couple weeks later matched fresh scat to him through DNA, proving he survived the fight. They say he is likely to be still living.

P2: Although she gave birth to P1′s four children, he killed her in August of 2005. Biologist Jeff Sikich actually aurally witnessed this, unsure if it was fighting or mating. He knew one thing was for sure at the moment, the cubs were present for it and he even saw one run away as it crossed the road where his truck was parked. “That’s pretty unusual actually,” explained Riley. “Mountain lions kill each other pretty regularly and occasionally males kill females, but no one has ever heard of males killing females that they had previosly mated with.” Riley guesses that she may have been defending the children as it is commonplace for a father and son to fight over their territory. The fight lasted around 45 minutes.

P3: He lived north of the 101 freeway roaming the Simi Hills and crossing the 118 freeway to the Santa Susana Mountains. But anticoagulants got the best of him. It is not known exactly under what conditions the compounds built up in the system, but Riley has his theories. While mountains lions’ main food source are anticoagulant-free deer, rodents and coyotes are known to carry the compounds in their systems. Rodents get it directly through poisons and coyotes eat those rodents, building up a storage of the chemicals in their liver over time. Now, if a mountain lion comes by and eats the coyote, taking in the liver full of anticoagulants, that high one-time dose could be fatal. Both the coyotes and lions seem to live with smaller doses building up in their liver. 85% of coyotes and all but one of the mountain lions studied after death in the Santa Monica Mountains have evidence of the chemicals in their system, but only two have died because of it, including P3.

P4: Like P3, she lived in the Simi Hills and Santa Susana Mountains and died of anticoagulants. The National Park Service is collaborating across the state with other agencies on this issue because there is very little research about the affect of these chemicals on the animals, but they are finding that exposure is extremely widespread.

P5: One of four children of P1 and P2, he grew up, staying with his mother until her death. On his own, he claimed a territory on the west end of the mountains, some of it slightly outside of his father’s area. Unfortunately, in September of 2006, he saw his territorial father again with fatal results.

P6: She also lives in the west end of the mountains within her brother’s territory. Like the rest of her siblings, tracking collars were put on when they were young, but her collar died prematurely. It was until last April that a remote wildlife motion sensor camera snapped a shot of her alive and well (photo above).

P7: Like her brother, P5, she was also killed by the father, P1, in June of 2006. It is believed it may have been over food and was actually witnessed by a rock climber in Malibu Creek State Park.

P8: The last of the siblings, this male claimed his territory on the east of the mountains before the 405 freeway. In September of 2006, he was also killed at the claws of a mountain lion, but not P1, his father, but one that was not being tracked. Then photos of this untracked lion popped up on the wildlife cameras and he was eventually captured and named P9 in May of 2007. DNA evidence proved he killed P8.

P9: the collar malfunctioned quickly, only 6 weeks worth of data. malfunctioned in an interesting way, collected data every minute, but that data is really interesting, really detailed movement data, where he’s using trails, crossing roads. turns out he killed a young 5 or 6 month old (P-B) in malibu creek in winter of 07 before capture. lost signal, got hit in late summer 2007 on malibu canyon road during rush hour and died. P-A was also hit on malibu canyon road, not far from where P9 was killed. other lions have cross a ton of times. P-C killed on 118 in rocky peak area last october. P-D killed on the 5 at calgrove, P-E killed on 405 on may 26th, driving southbound to UCLA, saw this thing on the road, looked like it was run over a few times.

P10: Caught in February of 2008, this guy has taken full range of the mountains and is still alive. It is likely he’s a sibling of P11, but it is unknown who their mother is, meaning another female lion lived or is living in the mountains untracked.

P11: Also caught in a trap in February of 2008, the collar signal died prematurely and his status is currently unknown. Genetic similarities between P11 and P10 indicate they may be siblings, but it’s not as easy with these mountain lions. “The genetic similarity of all of our lions makes these things harder to determine than they might otherwise be,” Riley said pointing to, once again, P1, as the potential father with an unknown mother.

P12: Just caught last December in the Simi Hills, he was the one who had Riley and others excited when he crossed the 101 freeway last March. Currently, he remains in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Still counting? By all counts, it appears there could be up to seven mountain lions living in the mountains. P1, 6, 10 and 12 are being tracked or leaving evidence and P11 is suspected to be out there. And then there are at least two without collars found on cameras.

What about the non-collared? As recently as just a couple weeks ago, a dead mountain lion was found off the 405 freeway’s southbound lanes. And a few weeks prior to that, another was killed on the 5 freeway in the Newhall Pass. They were named P-D and P-E, respectively. In the past years, two other untracked lions were killed on Malibu Canyon Road.

The future? The National Park Service will continue to track and study the mountain lions. As for humans, there have been no significant interactions. “In my 18 years as a National Park Ranger in the Santa Monica Mountains, I have yet to see one in the wild,” wrote Woody Smeck, the Superintendent of National Recreation Area, in a comment on LAist.

Mountain lions tend to stay away from humans, but there is fear that the continuing human development into and around the mountains in Los Angeles and Ventura counties will leave lions with less livable space and less deer–their main source of food–which means more mountain lion interactions with humans and the eventual demise of them in the area. Kari Kiser, Sr. Program Coordinator with the National Parks Conservation Association, couldn’t agree more. “Because of the amount of land needed to survive, we need to protect that and provide connectivity.”

P6 | Courtesy of the National Park Service

A young lion found dead on the 5 Freeway | Photo courtesy of the Mountains Recreation & Conservation Authority

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Mountain Lion Attacks Dog, Owner Kills Big Cat

A Boulder man who shot and killed a mountain lion that bit his dog won’t face charges. 

State wildlife officials say they won’t take action because the man felt threatened. His name hasn’t been released. 

The man shot the mountain lion Sunday. Colorado Division of Wildlife spokeswoman Jennifer Churchill says the cat had apparently gone to retrieve a deer carcass it had stashed on the man’s property in north Boulder when it attacked the dog. 

The dog survived. 

The mountain lion had tags in both ears and a radio collar. Churchill says it’s unclear whether the cat was collared because of previous run-ins with people or if it had been trapped and collared as part of an ongoing study in the Boulder area. 

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I’ll be honest: this story seems fishy and could just as easily be made up. But, in a scene straight out of Beverly Hills Chihuahua, here you go:

Small Dogs Chase Off Cougar

 

POSTED: 9:11 am PDT May 29, 2009

UPDATED: 10:18 am PDT May 29, 2009

PHILOMATH, Ore. – A cougar picked the wrong dogs for a fight in Philomath on Monday.

 

Two dogs chased off the big cat after it strayed into the yard of a home in the small western Oregon town near the Oregon State University campus. 

The dogs’ owner, Loren Wingert, said the cougar had pinned down her border terrier, Rosie, who squealed. Wingert’s other dog, a Chihuahua named Chiquita, then began to bark ferociously. 

The barking scared the cougar away and the dogs avoided injury in the attack.