CANMORE – A young female cougar, believed to be hunting bighorn sheep, was run over and killed on Highway 1A near Gap Lake Hill overnight on Monday (Jan. 4).
This is the third human-caused mortality of a cougar since 2019, when one was killed for attacking dogs and another was run over on the Trans-Canada Highway near Lac Des Arcs. There were no human-caused deaths in 2020.
“This was a vehicle-related mortality,” said Jay Honeyman, a human-wildlife conflict specialist with Alberta Environment and Parks.
“Road and rail mortality is the main cause of cougar mortality in the Bow Valley.”
According to Alberta Environment and Parks, 30 cougars were reported or found dead in the Bow Valley east of Banff National Park between 2000 and 2018. Of the 22 mortalities where sex was known, 10 were females and 12 were males.
In Alberta, hunting is the primary source of adult cougar mortality on provincial lands, however this is not the case in the Bow Valley.
While cougar hunting is allowed in certain areas of the Bow Valley, much of the area falls within a wildland park where dogs are not permitted to be off leash, which therefore discourages hunters.
According to AEP data, there has only been two registered hunter kills reported over the last 18 years and the hunting quota that is set for the Bow Valley every year is rarely met.
“Hunter harvest of cougars in the Bow Valley is therefore very low – seven per cent of total – relative to the rest of the province where hunting accounts for more than 60 per cent of all mortalities,” according to an AEP report on cougar occurrences in the valley.
“By far the largest source of mortality has been from highway and railway collisions. This mortality source accounted for almost 62 per cent – 18 of 29 – of all mortalities with 83 per cent of those – 15 of 18 – being from highway collisions.”
In fall 2019, a cougar was shot and killed by provincial conservation officers after it killed one dog and tried attacking another in the Ha-Ling Peak Trail and East End of Rundle areas.
The first encounter involved a cougar approaching a woman with her dog, which was on-leash. She was able to scare off the wild cat by using bear spray at a range of less than one metre.
While wildlife officers were investigating this incident, another call came in about a cougar attacking and snatching an off-leash dog. The cougar was later found eating the dog and was shot and killed.
