[FONT=VERDANA, ARIAL][SIZE=-1]I hope they dont shoot and kill this magnificent animal. [/SIZE][/FONT]
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[FONT=VERDANA, ARIAL][SIZE=-1]FLINTON — Another Eastern Ontario farmer has come forward with an account of mysterious wounds sustained by a horse that the owner believes were inflicted by a cougar.
Debbie Miles of Addington Highlands Township lives on a hobby farm near Flinton with her husband, Dave, and five children. Miles called The AgriNews to report her own story, after reading the December article about an alleged cougar attack on a horse at the Theo Booyink farm in South Stormont Township.
In his official report last October, South Stormont’s livestock evaluator ruled that a large open wound on the chest of Booyink’s quarterhorse mare, which survived the incident, was inflicted by a cougar.
The finding was virtually unprecedented. There has been no scientific evidence in decades to confirm that wild cougars still exist in Ontario — although the species is officially listed as endangered, not extinct. Anecdotal sightings are reported ever year.
A subsequent investigation into the South Stormont incident by Ministry of Natural Resources officials concluded there was nothing to indicate cougar involvement.
"In most cases there would be bites on the back of the head and neck. There would also be claw marks. This case doesn’t have those things," said Shaun Thompson, an MNR ecologist with the Kemptville district.
The wounds observed by the Miles family on their six-year-old Belgian draft horse in early November would seem to fit the profile better.
The gelding turned up one morning with "a bite to the back of the neck and claw marks on the shoulders and hips," said Debbie Miles, who believes the horse might have been jumped within a grove of hemlocks inside the small field he shared with two other horses and a handful of goats.
"There was hair missing on part of his back, and it looked as if it (the predator) fell off to the side and bit him on the shoulder."
She said one of the other horses was also scratched.
The previous evening, at about 11 p.m, the family’s Kuvas-breed guard dog "went berserk," she said, something the family initially attributed to the presence of bears in the bush around their home.
Her son, 17-year-old Jamie, works with the Belgian as a logger. He nursed the horse back to health by applying anti-septic to the wounds.The horse lost weight while on the mend but has made a full recovery.
She said hunters have told her they’ve spotted cougar tracks not far from the Miles homestead, she said.
"There’s about five people who have seen them," she said. "I reported it to the Ministry of Natural Resources because we had so many come in to say they had seen them."
Freeburn earlier believed she might have had a cougar-related incident at her own hobby farm, after one of her pregnant beef cows disappeared into the bush and emerged days later with strange wounds and minus the full-term calf she had carried. But those wounds, Freeburn later determined, were caused by bullets.
Miles also reported her injured Belgian to the MNR, but claimed officials showed little interest until she told them about Freeburn’s cow next door.
Although Shaun Thompson’s jurisdiction doesn’t cover Addington Highlands, he acknowledged hearing about an incident involving a cow there, but nothing about a draft horse.
Admitting to some frustration, he explained that people have been waiting too long to report their cougar encounters to the ministry — weeks or months after the fact, in some cases. That delay, he suggested, makes the information virtually useless to officials because physical evidence at the site, which could finally corroborate the existence of cougars in Ontario, is likely to have disappeared.
"Evidence like scat (feces), tracks, fur and scratch marks are very ephemeral, and very sensitive to weather and other disturbances."
According to the ecologist, the MNR is "extremely interested" in collecting information on cougar sightings and related incidents from the public.
In the Ottawa Citizen last month, Thompson appealed to people to call him at 258-8235 with their reports.
Callers should understand that he requires new and recent information, "very quickly" after the sighting occurs.
Those who report tracks in mud or snow should protect an imprint or two by covering with a light-coloured plastic pail (which won’t melt the snow) secured in place with a rock. "Take a picture of the track with a ruler beside it," he added. "Take a quick shot."
Snapping a photograph while in the process of observing an alleged cougar, if possible, would be helpful, too.
The MNR is currently working on a single protocol for handling calls from the public regarding cougar sightings and follow-up, according to Thompson.
At the present time, the MNR has not decided to set up automated monitoring devices, such as hair traps or infrared cameras, so the eyes and ears of the public are the principle tool in the hunt for felis concor.
"We’re always going to need the people out there to keep observing."
Should any physical evidence turn up, officials could subject it to DNA evidence, possibly at Trent University, and the scrutiny of outside experts.
When asked about the role the province’s cadre of municipal livestock evaluators might play in tipping the MNR about unusual livestock wounds, he agreed that communications could be improved.
Reports filed by livestock evaluators are handled through the Ministry of Agriculture, not the MNR. Thompson only learned of the evaluator’s reported cougar attack in South Stormont after reading about it in the media.
The ecologist also put to rest persistent rumours that MNR has been quietly reintroducing the cougar in Ontario.
The MNR must follow an elaborate public protocol when initiating any recovery effort for a particular species, he said, including the establishment of a recovery team.
He said MNR has no recovery team in place for the cougar.
"It’s not something you would ever do in secret," he insisted, adding any politician who proposed aiding the cougar's recovery with a reintroduction program would be committing political suicide.
A recovery team could be established in the future, to oversee any existing population of cougars, if and when they are proven to exist. "That might be prudent," he said.
If cougars are prowling the area, it could pose a challenge to the province’s system of reimbursing farmers for livestock predation.
According to Derek Nelson, executive assistant at Agriculture Minister Helen Johns’ office, the Livestock Poultry and Honey Bee Protection Act compensates farmers for kills inflicted by dogs, coyotes and wolves. He said other regulations also provide compensation for livestock killed by bears.
But there is no compensation for cougar kills. The issue first came to light in the South Stormont case.
If farmers want cougars added to the list, Nelson suggested, they’ll have to lobby the government for the change.
According to Thompson, a farmer who shoots a cougar while protecting his livestock would likely wind up in court because of the cat’s protected status. [/SIZE][/FONT]
