Cougars Can Trigger False Alarm
Screenshot from a video submitted to Carnivore Spotter, a public wildlife reporting website maintained by Woodland Park Zoo and Seattle University. Photo: Woodland Park Zoo
Earlier this year, colleagues shared an unusual surveillance video that was making the rounds. Murky camera footage showed a cougar-like creature wandering a neighborhood in West Seattle, slinking past cars in the sooty night. Soon reports trickled in from locals, too, as news of the cougar spread like Omicron. But unlike the pandemic, the cougar wasn’t a threat. In fact the animal in the video was likely a house cat, blown out of proportion by the tricks of a lens.
A new article in Crosscut features this twitchy tale in the broader context of coexisting with cougars, which do indeed inhabit Greater Seattle. And although wild cats, like wild anybodies, should be highly respected, the article brings home the point that sightings in general are no cause for alarm.
Among the various experts interviewed for the piece is my husband, wildlife biologist Robert Long, who says “…we live surrounded by cougars, so clearly, they could show up in just about anyone's backyard at any time, but that doesn't mean it's going to happen and the probability is very low.”
Screenshot from a video submitted to Carnivore Spotter, a public wildlife reporting website maintained by Woodland Park Zoo and Seattle University. Photo: Woodland Park Zoo
And when it does happen, there are steps we can take to keep ourselves and the big cats safe—as when a cougar spent some time on Bainbridge Island last year. Our own neighborhood cougar seems to have departed as mysteriously as it arrived, after spending many weeks here virtually unseen. True, the cougar did prey on livestock when it first made its presence known (and this was tragic for the animals and the people involved), but successful safety measures to protect livestock were quickly put in place.
The Crosscut article does an excellent job of promoting coexisting with cougars, but I was sad to see one expert inadvertently throw coyotes under the bus at the end: “I constantly tell people, your little dog or cat is at more risk from the dozen coyotes that are in your backyard than they are a lone cougar who may have been traipsing through looking for some blacktail deer or rabbits.”
Living safely with coyotes is both possible and common—a topic I addressed in my Wild Hope essay, Urban Dwellers. Like with cougars, the outcome of the coyote coexistence story is largely up to us.