Young cougar pair killed in Ocean Falls, B.C.

A pair of young cougars has been killed by conservation officers in Ocean Falls, B.C.

For days, residents watched the cougars feed on the carcass of a dead seal the animals had hauled onto a dock.

This left many residents in the tiny coastal community — home to about 30 residents — on edge.

"They're getting pretty bold and brazen," said resident Wilf Cartier. "I've watched the female — the big one — and she was lying on the dock beside the dead seal. She wasn't eating it but almost like she was protecting it."

He said the cougars had been scouting yards, walking into buildings, and prowling on porches.

"It's fine as long as one day they don't decide to take a human. They've been known to attack people without warning type of thing," he said.

"Boy oh boy, they're not afraid of anybody."

Resident Herb Carpenter estimated the cats were around 65 to 85 pounds (30 to 39 kilograms).

"I've hunted cougar and I've had a lot to do with the cougar, but these guys even got the dogs in town afraid of them," he said.

"I've never had them walk by me within five feet before."

Jeff Tyre with the Conservation Service said these concerns were an important consideration before officers killed the two cubs on Friday.

"[The officer] conducted an assessment of the behaviour and talked to citizens in the area and decided that those cats were a threat to human health and the city and destroyed those two cats," he said.

Residents said they saw the cougars' mother in the area, but according to Tyre, she hasn't stayed. He said conservation officers are monitoring the situation for now.

"Cougars are well established along the entire coast, [but] what drew us to these ones is their persistent presence in the community," he said.

Tyre said relocation wouldn't have worked with this pair, who, he said, had been spotted in the community for months.

"The two cats who were destroyed were highly habituated and conditioned. We would have just put the problem onto another community, or they simply would have died a long, drawn out death [in an unfamiliar territory]," he said.

The death of the cubs has created an outcry on social media with commentators saying the cats were only behaving as cougars would.

Gladys Miller, another resident of the community, sympathized with those comments but also said she understood that conservation officers had to prioritize the safety of Ocean Fall's human residents.

"I do not bear any hard will towards the officers. It is just their job. But I think as a community we should be respecting nature a little bit more," she said.

Ocean Falls, on B.C.'s Central Coast, is only accessible by boat or seaplane.

With files from Daybreak North

To listen to the segment, click on the link labelled Cougar family on the prowl at Ocean Falls