Sharing a cabin with bears in one thing. I have been well educated regarding these big black creatures.

• Don’t leave garbage laying around
• Always clean the barbecue after every use
• Avoid having bird feeders or fruit trees on my property
• Always make lots of noise when walking in the woods
• Never get between a bear and her cubs.

Enough said.

Cougars are another story. I know these creatures have attacked people on the Vancouver Island, usually children. Given the recent encounters on our lake, I wanted to find out how big a threat they posed to our safety.

I spoke to conservation officer, Ron Heusen, who is the field supervisor for central Vancouver Island. During our phone interview, one thing became very apparent, Ron has had a lot of experience with these big cats.

The first thing I wanted to know is, how big is the cougar population on Vancouver Island, and where do they live, i.e. how many are there on Horne Lake?

Ron explains, if you drew an imaginary line right down the centre of the Island, the majority of mountain lions can be found to the right of that line or on the eastern side. Campbell River, Courtney, Comox, Bowser, Qualicum, Parksville, Nanaimo and on down to Victoria, all have healthy populations.

Curious as to why the concentrations centred around populated areas, and not on the west coast coast, Ron states that deer are the cougars’ primary food source. These areas have huge deer populations making it easy for them to hunt and feed. This also explains why there have been no attacks on people in these areas.

Overall, the cougar population has been declining on Vancouver Island. While they no longer keep data on their numbers, conservation authorities are not seeing the kills (on livestock) like they used to. Cougars are showing up starving to death.

Ron attributes their decline to the extensive logging that is taking place. Wolves are the cougars primary competitor when it comes to deer, and even though there are very of them on Island, they are very efficient hunters. The logging corridors have enabled the wolves to hunt deer twice as fast and after they leave an area, the deer population has been decimated, leaving little food for the cougars. This massive loss of prey has hit the cougars hard.

When I ask Ron about cougar attacks on Vancouver Island, he says they average one a year, usually children. He also notes Island cats are the most aggressive in North America. We have the highest concentration of people killers resulting in the most of fatalities of anywhere in North America. That’s the bad news.

The good news is the likely hood of being attacked by a cougar is 1 in 17 million.

Tomorrow, I will review what to do and what not do when confronting a cougar.

Cheers,

Julie