North Shore professional dog walkers are warning the public of likely cougar activity in the trails above the British Properties.
There have been numerous close calls in recent weeks, especially on the District of West Vancouver’s Ballantree Trail, according to Barry Rueger, spokesman for the North Shore Professional Dogwalkers’ Alliance.
“We tend to be up in that area a lot,” Rueger said. “The walkers have pretty much got it covered. They know what’s up. It’s just that over the holidays, there are likely to be a lot more of the general public hiking up there and taking their dogs up to go for walks. It’s probably good for them to know there might be an animal up there that could be a risk to them.”
Stef Launay, a dog walker with Release the Hounds, has had two frightening encounters.
Three weeks ago she was walking a group of dogs when one of them bolted off trail after he caught the scent of something interesting. When she caught up with the dog, she found a disturbing scene.
“It was a fresh, huge, deer carcass — totally intact, its face and everything, except its whole middle was thrown open,” she said.
The dogs however were more interested in rolling in a “stinky” white residue that had been sprayed in the area, similar to how cougars mark their territory, she noted.
Then a week later, another incident.
“Obviously the dogs noticed it first and they just started freaking out. They roared up ahead and started screaming in the middle of nowhere,” she said.
At first, she thought it may have been a coyote or something else but then she heard a growl come from the bush. She quickly gathered the dogs and started heading back down the trail but whatever made the growl continued following them, growling twice more on the way.
She later cross referenced the sound she heard with an audio recording of a cougar’s growl she found online.
“I wanted to make sure I knew what it was and it was exactly what a cougar sounds like: very, very low. Very cat-like,” she said. “It was pretty incredible, to be honest.”
Rueger himself had a similar experience recently as he was coming back down the trail.
“You hear it, following along beside you. In my case it was uphill above us for a good 20 minutes,” Rueger said. “Basically, I got all (the dogs) in quite close and we moved more quickly and made a heck of a lot of noise. That’s pretty much the limit to what you can do.”
Despite the worrying incidents, the province’s Conservation Officer Service hasn’t been able to confirm the cougars.
“We’ve had no confirmed kills or any confirmed sightings of cougars,” said conservation officer David Stanford. “It’s possible. I wouldn’t say there aren’t cougars in the area because it is a wildlife corridor. There are bears, cougars, coyotes, bobcats — all that kind of stuff.”
Anyone who sees a cougar or evidence of one is encourage to call the province’s hotline at 1-877-952-7277, Stanford said.
The district also asks anyone to report dangerous wildlife so staff can put up signs, or even close trails if necessary, according to West Vancouver spokesman Jeff McDonald.
