The cougar wasn’t distant when Bart George began walking a path at Riverside State Park on Tuesday.
A handheld GPS system advised George, the wildlife program supervisor for the Kalispel Tribe, that the cat was just a little methods south and simply downhill from him, a number of hundred yards away. He turned on a Bluetooth speaker and a podcast broke the morning silence.
As the recorded voices mentioned the deserves of astrology, George regarded down into Seven Mile Canyon. Patches of grass and thick cowl blended with the occasional tall pine on the hillside under him. The GPS sign gave the impression to be coming from one island of medium-sized timber on the backside, the steep slope on one aspect and one other path on the opposite.
“He’s going to be right there in that copse of trees,” George stated.
Back within the parking zone, a few dozen folks waited – George’s employees, some from the state park, some from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife – together with 4 hounds itching to place a cougar in a tree.
Before they may be part of him, although, George needed to method the animal on his personal. It’s a part of a research he’s main on what cougars do after they hear human voices – on this case, a podcast – and the way shut the voices should be to make the animal flee.
This could be the fourth time he approached this explicit cat. He left the path and side-hilled his manner across the animal’s hiding spot, navigating by means of thick brush and over downed logs.
At one level, he heard voices that weren’t coming from the speaker. He stopped and listened. Two males had been walking the path on the backside of the canyon.
When their voices pale, George continued down. He acquired to the path and walked slowly, lining himself up with the GPS sign. A can of bear spray in a single hand, he stepped into the timber and regarded.
The cougar’s tawny, brown disguise stood out within the shadows, on the bottom about 10 yards off the path.
It wasn’t shifting. George made some noise, hoping it could react. It didn’t.
“That’s a habituated lion,” George stated. “That’s what we don’t want.”
He radioed again to the parking zone, telling the folks there that it was time to set the dogs unfastened. Howls and barks echoed down the canyon, and George backed away.
The cougar’s indifference to his presence isn’t uncommon after he’s approached a cat a number of occasions. The animal appears to know nothing unhealthy goes to occur. That doesn’t inherently imply it’s harmful – assaults on people are uncommon – simply that it lacks a wholesome concern of individuals.
“Even on the walk down here, we heard those two men walk this trail just jabbering,” he stated. “They walked within 10 yards of that cat. Is there a risk for those people? Pretty low. … It’s just something to be mindful of.”
The dogs adopted George’s scent down the hill and dashed towards the cougar’s hideout. Soon, they had been gathered on the base of a tall pine, howling to the sky.
Some 70 or 80 ft up, the cougar perched on a department, its morning disrupted.
Research topic
Cougars sneak by means of the woods throughout Washington, and they are often arduous to rely. WDFW’s 2022 estimate put the quantity at about 3,600 cougars statewide, however when George will get requested what number of there are, he tells people who any habitat that ought to have cougars in all probability does.
“Cougars are everywhere they belong,” he stated.
Sometimes, the place they belong can be one which’s full of individuals, like Riverside State Park. The cats normally keep hidden, till they don’t.
Just a little greater than two weeks earlier than George was walking as much as that cougar in Seven Mile Canyon, the cat was noticed on a path within the park, following a mountain biker.
The biker advised KXLY that he yelled and shook his bike on the cat, and it backed off. He stored using. He noticed the cougar yet one more time, however was in a position to walk away with out damage.
The incident prompted Washington State Parks to succeed in out to George.
George has a workforce of hounds and has been treeing and dealing with mountain lions for a very long time. Over the previous three years, he’s additionally been learning the cats’ responses to human voices, and whether or not their conduct might be modified by means of hazing. The concept is to get the cats to affiliate the sound of people with a detrimental expertise, and get them to flee when folks method.
First, he approaches them a number of occasions with out dogs, simply him and the speaker taking part in a podcast. He tracks how shut the cougar lets him get earlier than it runs, and, when it does run, how far it goes. That’s referred to as the management section.
During the hazing section, he approaches once more and ultimately brings within the hounds to tree the cat and makes use of different strategies to scare the animal.
George has put greater than 40 cougars from all around the area by means of the research. He plans to write down up the outcomes subsequent spring. So far, the information exhibits that the hazing works.
By the tip of the management section, he sometimes finds that the cats are comfy letting folks get near them, anticipating that nothing unhealthy goes to occur to them. But as soon as the cougars expertise the hazing, they begin reacting extra strongly to the sound of individuals approaching, fleeing sooner and farther.
“By the end of the study, the cats are not letting us get as close to them and they are moving farther away from us,” he stated.
Sgt. Tony Leonetti, a regulation enforcement officer with WDFW, stated the research has already given the company a brand new option to cope with cougars reported in locations near folks.
Instead of simply giving recommendation on methods to forestall additional battle, they will name George to come back and get an in depth have a look at the cat. They can work out if it’s wholesome, or if it has kittens, or if there’s a cause it’s hanging out near folks. And, if it suits the parameters of the research, George will run it by means of the protocols and hopefully change its conduct.
“It gives us a non-lethal tool to use when people call in cougar sightings in their driveways, or in their yard,” Leonetti stated.
Those kinds of calls are how George has discovered most of his analysis topics, just like the cougar that chased the mountain biker at Riverside State Park.
Mere hours after the incident was reported, George and his workforce trapped it. It’s a male, about 4 years old. Because it was in fine condition, and since it hadn’t truly attacked the bicyclist, it was candidate for the analysis challenge.
“He was healthy, and just made a bad choice,” George stated. “So we elected to put a collar on him and see if we could learn something from him.”
Up shut
Tuesday was the final “control point” for the research of the cougar within the park. George goes to revisit it 4 extra occasions to run by means of the hazing a part of the research. To guarantee he can do this, although, he wanted to interchange the batteries in its GPS collar – a transfer that ought to purchase them one other month of following the animal.
That meant that when it was treed, they wanted to tranquilize it and convey it right down to the bottom.
The first tree the cat climbed was too tall. It was additionally partway up the steep hillside on the sting of the canyon. A nasty place to attempt to carry it down with out hurting it.
The hounds had been referred to as off and moved away so George and the others may attempt to coax the animal out of the tree.
It took some time. George peppered the tree with a paintball gun. One of his biologists hit the stump with a department. The cougar switched timber, however in any other case appeared unbothered.
Jeff Flood, a wildlife specialist with the Stevens and Ferry county sheriff’s places of work, donned climbing gear and scaled one of many timber till he was almost eye-level with the cougar. He shot a number of extra paintballs, waved some branches, hissed at it.
Finally, the cougar pointed its head down and descended the tree, all athleticism and charm. It bounded away, previous its unique daybed, throughout the path and over to a flat spot.
The dogs had been set unfastened, and the refrain of howls crammed the air once more. Soon, the cat was treed once more – this time, low sufficient for some work to get completed.
George shot it with a tranquilizer dart and it was rigorously lowered to the bottom and laid on a tarp. As the animal slept, the individuals who had been following all of it day gathered round it.
They slipped a blinder over its eyes and eliminated the collar. They examined its paws and its tooth. Its chest was filled with porcupine quills; George and Flood rigorously pulled out every one.
About an hour after it was put to sleep, the work was over. The collar was reattached, and the cat was injected with a drug meant to reverse the consequences of the tranquilizer. Within a couple of minutes, it walked into the forest and sat down behind a log. The individuals who had been following all of it day packed up and left.
George can be again quickly. Once he’s completed the hazing portion of the research, he’ll take away the collar. By that time, the cougar will hopefully have the identical response as the remainder of the animals George has analyzed – a concern of human interplay, and a diminished likelihood of significant battle.
“The best-case scenario would be for us to haze this cat, get him to have a healthy fear of people and human interactions and have him maintain this territory,” George stated. “There’s going to be a cougar in the park, so we may as well have it be one that got hazed.”
But in actuality, it’s unlikely the cougar will spend its complete life within the state park. A cougar’s home vary can get as huge as 100 sq. miles. In the previous, George has seen them wander lengthy distances, from Priest Lake up into Canada, from Chewelah over to Mount Baker.
Where this one will go is anybody’s guess, George stated.
“There’s no reason for him to leave, really,” George stated. “They don’t need a reason. They just like to wander like we do.”
