Cougars have been stalking humans in unprecedented numbers in British Columbia. Why do they prey on us and how can we live safely in their territory? BY TERRY GLAVIN t was a perfectly ordinary August afternoon in 2002 in Port Alice, B.C., when David Parker de- cided to go for a walk. The 61-year-old retired mill- maintenance foreman had been working on the roof of his small house on Marine Drive and had felt a bit of a cramp in one of his legs. He reckoned a walk would do him good, so he headed out on a route he was accustomed to taking on his evening strolls. IHe strode down a gravel road that connects Port Alice, a pulp-mill village on Vancouver Island’s northwest coast, with the Jeune Landing log-sorting yard on Neroutsos Inlet. About a kilometre and a half from Jeune Landing, it started to rain. Parker had just ducked under a rock ledge at the side of the road to wait out the downpour when he thought he heard a noise behind him and turned to see what it was. At that very moment, Parker found himself staring into the eyes of a healthy young male Puma concolor, an animal that goes by many names: cougar, mountain lion, puma, panther, catamount, night crier, ghost walker, swamp devil. This one was an arm’s length from his face. He turned to run. The cougar pounced, and Parker was knocked face down in a ditch. The predator clung to his COUGARCOUGAR ATTACK!ATTACK! back, sinking its teeth into his skull. Within seconds, most of Parker’s scalp was torn away. His jaw was broken, his left cheekbone was cracked, and the orbital bones of his left tem- ple were crushed. His right ear was hanging by a thread of skin. “I remember thinking I’d never see my wife again,” says Parker. “I remember thinking, well, this is where it all ends.” But then and there, he decided he wasn’t going to die on a rainy afternoon in a shallow ditch beside a dirt road on the out- skirts of Port Alice. While the cougar was tearing at him with its claws and pulling away bits of his scalp, Parker reached for a small pocket knife in a sheath attached to his belt. “You fight back,” he says, “because that’s all there is left to do.” At the moment Parker reached for his knife, the cougar bit Retired pulp-mill worker David Parker survived a cougar attack on a gravel road on northern Vancouver Island. The frequency of such attacks is rising, as human activities MARINA DODIS increasingly encroach upon cougar habitat. CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC 5 3 ougar attacks aren’t exactly unheard of in Port Alice, a village of about 1,100 people nestled against the rain forest south of remote Quatsino Sound. House cats routinely fall prey to hungry cougars. It’s the same in all Cthe towns and villages around the sound — Winter Harbour, Quatsino, Coal Harbour, Holberg. Cougars come with the country. That’s the way it’s always been. Still, something un- usual seems to be going on. In the three years before Parker’s attack, three cougars were shot within sight of his house. One, spotted in his driveway, was reported to have been stalking children on their way to school. Another had attacked a dog on a trail behind Parker’s place. It, too, was tracked down and killed. The third cougar was shot after becoming a routine nuisance at Port Al- ice’s public works yard. The year before Parker’s grisly encounter, a worker was dri- ving home from his shift at the Western Pulp mill when he found a cougar attacking a man in the middle of the road just outside of town. The man, a tugboat captain from Seattle, had been riding his bicycle back to his moored boat after din- ner in Port Alice when the cougar jumped him from behind, knocking him off his bike. His rescuer had to beat the cougar about the head, first with his lunch pail, then with the victim’s bicycle, to get him off the man. In 1992, a cougar walked onto the playground of an ele- mentary school at Kyuquot, about 50 kilometres across the mountains from Port Alice, and killed an eight-year-old boy. Two years later, a seven-year-old boy was walking to MARINA DODIS school at Gold River, 120 kilometres southeast of Kyuquot, Parker used this knife to inflict a mortal wound on the when he was attacked by a cougar and dragged into the cougar as it was biting his head. He advises people in bushes. His father arrived on the scene and scared away the cougar country to “be very, very wary.” animal. Nearby, several months later, a cougar attacked an RCMP constable on horseback. Then a logger was jumped his face, causing his right eye to protrude from its socket. in Zeballos, and two campers had to use an axe to fight off Still, he managed to unfold the knife’s eight-centimetre an emaciated cougar south of Port Hardy. blade. He plunged it into the cougar’s neck and, with his It all added up to an especially nasty spate of cougar attacks other hand, held onto the animal. Moments later, the for such a small area. But it wasn’t happening only in and cougar stopped struggling and gave up its final breath. With around Vancouver Island’s northern coastal villages. Attacks blood streaming from his face and head, Parker stood up and have been on the rise throughout the animal’s range: al- slowly started walking to Jeune Landing. most half of all the attacks recorded in the past century “I just put one foot in front of the other,” he says. “I have occurred during the past decade. thought I’d try to get as far as I could before I collapsed. In 1991, Paul Beier, a wildlife ecologist at Northern Ari- That’s all I had on my mind.” zona University in Flagstaff, published a detailed study of At the landing, a worker found Parker staggering down cougar attacks in North America over the previous 100 years. the road. He was rushed south by air ambulance to Victo- He had searched newspaper archives, popular magazines and ria’s Royal Jubilee Hospital, where he spent more than 10 academic journals and had contacted wildlife agencies in Al- hours in surgery. berta, British Columbia and all 12 western American states. Over the next two years, Parker would make more than 30 He found that more people throughout North America had visits to doctors and surgeons in Victoria, a seven-hour drive been attacked by cougars since 1970 than during the entire each way. It took 350 staples to secure his scalp back to his skull, 80-year stretch from 1890 to 1970. Sixty-eight percent of the 200 stitches to close the gashes on his face and several plates and 53 confirmed attacks from 1890 to 1990 had occurred after metal screws to reconstruct his jaw. Then there was the constant 1970. More people were dying in cougar attacks too. Between pain, the recurring nightmares and the anger. But nowadays, 1890 and 1970, there had been only four fatalities. Between Parker is stoic about it all. He’s back playing old-timers hockey 1970 and 1990, there were five. twice a week, and he’s curling again. “I was in the wrong place Beier revisited his survey in 2001, and his new findings at the wrong time,” he says. “That’s about all there was to it.” were even more disturbing. Of 98 cougar attacks in North MIKE ANICH/AGE/FIRSTLIGHT.CA 5 4 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC MAY/JUNE 2004 Safety in cougar country Q OSTPEOPLEWILLNEVER glimpse a cougar in the wild, 0 10 20 km u een C much less have a confrontation with one. But even though har M lo tt conflicts between cougars and humans are extremely rare, peo- e S CAPE SCOTT tra ple who live in or visit cougar country should be prepared. The PROV. PARK it Port Hardy following advice from the British Columbia Ministry of Water, Holberg Coal Port Land and Air Protection will reduce your risk of a cougar attack Harbour McNeill and prepare you in the unlikely event one occurs. Quatsino Winter Harbour Home and yard: Don’t attract or feed wildlife, especially deer Sound ino and raccoons. These are natural prey and may attract a hungry ats Jeune Landing Qu NIMPKISH LAKE PACIFIC Neroutsos PROV. PARK cougar. Consider getting a watchdog, because it can smell, hear Inlet Port Alice K PHOTO and see a cougar sooner than a human can. Dogs don’t deter OCEAN cougars, but they may distract one from attacking a human. BROOKS TAHSISH-KWOIS Pets: Roaming pets are easy prey. Bring your pets inside at PENINSULA PROV. PARK PROV. PARK night. If they must be left out, keep them in a kennel with a Enlarged secure top. Don’t feed pets outside. This attracts young cougars area Port Hardy and many small animals, such as mice and raccoons, upon which Kyuquot cougars prey. Keep livestock in a closed shed or barn at night. Port Alice Children: Cougars seem to be attracted to children, possibly because their high-pitched voices, small size and erratic move- Zeballos Campbell River ments make cougars identify them as prey. Encourage children V A N Gold River to play outdoors in supervised groups. Fence in play areas.