Posted on 06/19/2019 7:24:13 AM PDT by SJackson
LEAVENWORTH, Washington — A cougar attacked a child Saturday evening in a city park in Leavenworth, Washington.
The big cat was spotted Saturday afternoon in Enchantment Park and was acting abnormally, according to a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife statement. Officials searched the park for the cougar, but were unable to find it. The city then closed the park.
However, around dusk on Saturday the cougar attacked a young boy. The boy’s two dogs fought the cougar, eventually running the big cat off. The boy suffered only minor injuries.
“The cougar came out and did attack the child,” said WDFW Capt. Michael Jewell. “They had some dogs with them that they turned loose. The dogs intervened and were able to successfully chase the cougar away.”
WDFW officers searched the park again, eventually finding and killing the cougar Sunday at 1:30 a.m.
The cougar was a young adult male and did not appear to be unhealthy, according to WDFW biologists who visually examined the animal. WDFW will conduct further testing.
Enchantment Park is in the heart of downtown Leavenworth, near the Wenatchee River. The park has a playground, play fields and hiking trails. Wildlife are not an uncommon sight, according to the city of Leavenworth’s website.
“It’s a really popular park,” Jewell said. “Not necessarily easy to control access in and out of it. And who could have predicted something like this?”
There have been several recent high-profile cougar attacks in Washington and nationwide. On May 19, 2018, a cougar attacked two mountain bikers near Seattle, eventually killing one of them. In February, a runner in Colorado killed a cougar with his bare hands after being attacked on a trail.
Cougar attacks are rare and fatalities even more uncommon. Prior to last year’s fatal attack, the last cougar-related fatality in Washington was in 1924, when a cougar ambushed a teenage boy near his home in Olema, Okanogan County.
In addition to the high-profile attacks, there were have been numerous sightings and close calls throughout Washington and Idaho.
Biologists and wildlife managers disagree on why there have been more attacks. Some believe increased attacks indicate a growing cougar population. Others say that’s not necessarily the case.
According to one WDFW study, the rate at which cougars enter and inhabit human areas remains relatively steady, regardless of the overall cougar population. That finding comes from a study in western Washington, near Snoqualmie.
Between 2004 and 2008, about 50 percent of the adult females studied in an area survived. That number indicates a declining population. During that same time, the average cougar was in residential areas 16 percent of the time. Compare that with 2013-17, when 90 percent of female cougars survived in the same study area. The ratio of residential use stayed steady, at 16 percent.
Instead, some biologists believe the increased number of sightings and encounters has to do with an expanding human footprint and the fact that there have been numerous high-profile cougar attacks. Those attacks raise awareness, which leads to increased sightings. This is a cognitive phenomenon known as the frequency illusion or the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.
Not all researchers agree with this analysis; some maintain that the cougar population is growing.
Cougars are notoriously hard to study, but improving technology is helping scientists gain a better understanding of the elusive cats. For instance, recent research indicates that cougars are more social than previously believed, although the findings have been questioned by some biologists.
Cougars were hunted for decades, leading to their near-extinction in North America. But since the 1970s, they have made a slow comeback with stricter hunting regulations and tighter management. In 1996, Washington outlawed hound hunting.
In January, concerns about cougars took center stage at a WDFW Commission meeting in Spokane. Residents of northeast Washington in particular raised concerns about what they believe to be a growing cougar population.
Experts recommend carrying bear spray when recreating in cougar country.
Yes, once they cross the line and look at people as prey there is no choice. We have consistently taken land that was once the domain of wildlife so it is no surprise that animals start pushing back in their old territory, coyotes have been doing that for decades here in California and we have always had mountain lion risks in certain county and state parks.
The Enviroxs demanded that no cougars could be killed off.
Hence, Calif-Oregon- Washington & other states are having trouble with cougars getting bolder & bolder.
If their predatory species cannot get ANY kind of controls, the number of cougars will only increase.
Years go, a cougar killed a woman jogger near Auburn, Calif, along the middle fork of the American River. She had earbuds in & the cat attacked her from behind.
I’m fencing in for goats and small pigs so we got a Great Pyrenees. I noticed him looking up and barking at something on the other side of the house and said to myself, oh, great, he barks at squirrels. Then he looked up in the opposite direction and there was no way a squirrel could have gone that far that fast so I looked up and he was barking at 3-4 hawks that were circling overhead. I don’t know if he’s been around chickens but if he has or at least if he’s good with them, at least I know the chances of hawks getting them will be lessened.
We’ve got bold coyotes here too and most of the property is still forest. Been a fun job clearing for fence through the forest and digging holes in the rocky clay soil that is the Ozarks.
She was also running which could triggered the cougar's predatory instincts.
“The cougar came out and did attack the child,” said WDFW Capt. Michael Jewell. “They had some dogs with them that they turned loose. The dogs intervened and were able to successfully chase the cougar away.”
William Zinsser, in “On Writing Well,” includes this illustration by George Orwell on how not to do it. Orwell takes a verse from Ecclesiastes and rewrites it into modern bureaucratic sludge.
I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
This became:
Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.
who's a good boy...
Thank God for the dogs!
I’m one of those that believes the cougar is a majestic animal that should be left alone if possible.
I’m also one that believes in common sense so if one attacks a human...……...go men asai cougar!
Can we train them to attack only Democrats and RINO’s?
Also called panthers, as was the local high school football team. 30 years ago I lived in Washington State on acreage that backed up to 1000 acres of undeveloped state forest land. My woods were criss-crossed with deer paths, and I would go out there in my spare time and mark the edges of the paths with fallen branches. I walked the paths and explored the woods daily with my dogs and my cats. I was hoping to find a spring that I could develop into a pond for ducks (foolish goal).
On day, I was out walking with my animals when I spotted some unusual foliage in a marshy area. To get there, I had to walk across a fallen tree, hop down, and examine the area. My dogs refused to follow me. They sat right down and howled. My cats scaled a tree and yowled. I forged ahead.
In the mud, I found huge paw prints — much larger than my 85 lb. Golden Retriever would have made. I took my husband down there to examine the prints when he got home, and he pooh-poohed me, saying that it was probably just from a stray dog. (Although I had the biggest dog on the hillside.)
We sold the house to the DNR, who made it into a Ranger Station, and moved out of state. 5 years later, we went back on a visit and we were shocked to see that the DNR had made my pasture into a parking lot and had maps of my trails posted for visitors with a big warning: BEWARE of PANTHERS!
My blood ran cold when I remembered how flaky my animals got and how they effused to approach the area where I found the very large paw print!
The son of my neighbor comes home twice a year to visit his dad and the last time he visited us he saw a cougar strolling down the street to the gulch below us. It has been seen on trail camera footage also. This is in Eureka Calif...
The cougars (panthers, mountain lions, bobcats), deer and bear were here first, so I say give them all the respect and space that they need.
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