CANMORE – A known female cougar has been killed by hunters near Gap Lake earlier this week, leaving the fate of her two orphaned kittens uncertain.
Canmore-based wildlife photographer John Marriott, who co-founded Exposed Wildlife Conservancy, has been tracking this female cougar that lives around Canmore for at least four years and believes the two kittens will likely starve to death.
“There’s a tremendous feeling of sorrow. I’ve tracked her for more than four years. She was an amazing mature adult female, and kept away from people,” he said.
“It’s been a very demoralizing and discouraging couple of days.”
The drama began to unfold when Marriott went out to check his trail cameras on the benchlands to the east of Canmore, between town and Gap Lake along Highway 1A, on Monday (Feb. 10.)
He discovered a dead bighorn sheep about 25 metres off the road by Bighorn Meadows about five km east of Canmore, and quickly determined the sheep had been killed by a cougar, not struck by a vehicle.
Marriott said hair had been sheared off the bighorn sheep and its neck was broken and twisted – key indications of a cougar kill – but there were also cougar tracks everywhere, including tiny kitten paw prints.
Staking out the area in case the cougars came back to feed, he soon noticed two or three men and a few dogs coming through the trees toward trucks and realized it was a hunting outfit with cougar hounds.
“My heart absolutely sank,” said Marriott.
Distraught, Marriott did not sleep much that night, but went out again on Tuesday to further investigate.
He found two locations where he believes the female cougar was treed by the hounds, and following bloodstained snow, eventually found the spot he thinks she died.
“The cat would have been shot out of a tree with an arrow. She may have fallen and then ran a bit and maybe ripped into a little bit by the dogs – it’s hard to say, but that’s often what cougar hounds do,” he said.
When he found the spot where he believed the mother cat took her final breath, Marriott sat down.
“I just sat there for quite a while, feeling a tremendous amount of sorrow and disgust and anger,” he said.
“I couldn't imagine the fear that must have been in her heart and in her head, and knowing that she'd been separated from her kitten by this point.”
After about 30 minutes, Marriott looped the area just above where the big cougar was killed and found kitten tracks.
“They were probably looking for mom or maybe trying to find mom initially or when the chase was going on,” he said.
“That was just absolutely beyond heartbreaking. I don't even really have words to describe what that was like. It was horrific.”
Marriott initially thought there was just one kitten, but one of the trail cameras he put up on Wednesday night near the site of their mother's death revealed there are two cougar kittens.
He said the kittens are small, and based on the size of their paw prints and gait, estimated to be about three-and-a-half to five months old.
“I don’t think they’ve learned how to hunt yet,” he said, adding they will probably starve to death. "These poor kittens have no guidance right now. They don't know what they're doing."
Hunting quotas expanded for cougars
In 2024, the province of Alberta under Alberta Parks Minister Todd Loewen expanded the hunting quota for cougars.
Previous quotas were carefully established to manage the cougar population and maintain a stable age structure and reduce conflict. These recent expansions go against years of science-based management.
Sarah Elmeligi, Banff-Kananaskis MLA and a wildlife biologist, said from cougars to grizzly bears and wolverines, the problem is the lack of robust science being used to inform these decisions.
“Wildlife management is a well-established field of study and Alberta has internationally renowned scientists who have devoted their careers to understanding our wildlife populations,” she said.
“The recent decisions to expand hunting opportunities are not considering these broad bodies of work. It's very upsetting for me as a wildlife biologist and an 51黑料.”
The province had added new wildlife management units to allow hound hunting in more of Alberta.
It is not illegal to hunt female cougars, but it is unlawful to hunt a cougar kitten with spotted fur or a female cougar accompanied by a cougar kitten with spotted fur.
Before shooting, hunters should carefully evaluate whether a cougar has spots or whether it is accompanied by another cougar that has spots, according to the government’s website.
Regardless, Marriott said it is an issue of ethics.
“Why would anyone want to kill cougars with kittens?” he said, noting even if the kittens no longer had spots in this case, they are still very small and needed their mother.
Winter cougar hunting is allowed from Dec. 1 to March 31 and there is a separate quota for male and female cougars in each cougar management area. The season in each area closes independently for each sex when the quota has been filled.
Dogs may also be used to hunt cougars during this timeframe in a cougar management area where the season remains open.
Working dogs are permitted off-leash in wildland parks as well as select provincial parks and provincial recreation areas if the authorized hunter is actively hunting cougar, the dogs can return in command and the dogs are GPS tracked.
“In my mind, cougar hunting with hounds is the most unethical, unfair chase there is,” he said.
“GPS collar hounds, hunters looking at iPads, shooting out of tree … and nobody else can have a dog off-leash, but cougar hunters can.”
Marriott is not the only local who feels this way. During a talk with Marriott on Real Talk with Ryan Jespersen on Thursday morning (Feb. 13), Canmore Coun. Wade Graham, an avid bow hunter, also piped in on the subject.
He wrote that Canmore has done an amazing job of coexisting with wildlife in the Bow Valley, however, he said he has never understood why anybody would want to hunt with dogs “just so they can hang a rug on the wall.”
“This saddens me deeply, we’ve got to do better,” said Graham, whose comments were read out by Jespersen.
“While we ask everybody here to have their dogs on leash, somebody can unleash their GPS-tracked hounds for this sort of thing … it’s absolutely baffling to me.”
Marriott said bounties for cougars are paid out by the Alberta Professional Outfitters Association – $7,000 for a female cougar and up to $4,000 for a male.
“They’re trying to encourage people to kill females to increase the sheep population, so basically they're eradicating cougars so that there's more sheep for them to kill,” he said.
“Because of this bounty, we've got all these guys mowing down cougars all over the place.”
Number of cougars hunted not yet known for 2024-25
The number of cougars hunted in Alberta from April 1 2023 to March 31, 2024, was 103, which includes resident and non-resident hunters. Of the 103, 26 were female.
Other human-caused mortality over that same period amounted to 73 cougars, referred to by the statistics as incidental, including traps, landowner kills or so-called problem cougars.
Alberta Parks is looking into the numbers of cougars killed by hunters in this region so far this season for the Outlook.
Marriott said he believes the number will be way higher this year given changes to the regulations and the bounties offered.
“We’re going to see a huge uptick when they release the latest numbers,” he said.
The death of this cougar is causing outrage in the local Canmore community.
Lisa Young, a member of the Bow Valley Riding Association, who often saw this cougar's track, including by the horse corrals, said this cougar was "amazing."
During his four years of tracking this cougar, Marriott said he believes she has had at least three litters of kittens.
He said she lived and travelled from Cougar Creek to Gap Lake and over to Wind Valley and Three Sisters region, occasionally crossing Cougar Creek towards Harvie Heights. Her main territory was the chunk of land directly south and east of Canmore.
Marriott said this cougar has never had an issue with people or dogs.
“She was an adult female that knew how to deal with humans and dogs and she didn't bother us and vice versa,” he said.
“She is a huge loss to the ecosystem.”
