Hunter, Neighbors Banded Together To Catch Orphaned Cougar Cubs

An “avid” Washington hunter-trapper’s concerns and actions, a neighborhood’s effort and a state wildlife tech’s specialized skills can all be credited with how a zoo in Pennsylvania ended up acquiring those orphaned cougar kittens.

The transfer of the young animals to the zoo and their public unveiling last week received national attention, but there’s a bit more to the first part of the story.

Some people might assume that all hunters hate cougars and other predators and would rather see them dead, but Skylar Masters, an all-around Northwest sportsman, helped to organize the kitten capture that took place back in late June on a wooded, rural hillside east of I-5’s Todd Road exit just south of Kalama.

He and another man even crawled into what they believe was a lion’s den in rescuing one of the still-spotted cubs.

In wanting to share the story, Masters said it’s important for the general public to see how invested in conservation hunters are, particularly in light of the “current climate” at the state Fish and Wildlife Commission as it makes contentious decisions and mulls controversial changes that have some of its strongest traditional supporters feeling increasingly nervous – “and I think they should be,” according to one member of the citizen panel that oversees WDFW policies.

THE KITTENS’ MOTHER IS BELIEVED TO HAVE BEEN KILLED on June 8 by a farmer as it dragged off one of their lambs, and while the action was legal under RCW 77.36.030, when Masters learned that it had been a lactating female, he and neighbor Brian Davis “knew there had to be orphan cubs around, so we started discussing ways to locate them.”

Like many hunters these days who use them to pattern game but also to add to their enjoyment of the natural world, Masters owns trail cameras, so he set up several on his property, which is next to other 5- to 20-acre parcels and backs up against private timberlands, in hopes of catching a glimpse of any kittens.

It took a couple weeks, but on June 23 a cub showed up on a cam.

“Knowing the cub was most likely from the recently killed lion, I knew I needed to act fast,” Masters said. “I made multiple attempts to contact WDFW and the first officer to call me back said to ‘let nature run its course.’ I thought this response was 100 percent inappropriate. As a hunter and trapper, I feel conservation should be a top priority.”

True, but it’s also a brutal fact of life that cubs, fawns, calves, ducklings, fingerlings, smolts and all other young fish and wildlife are just the most likely to die, be it from weather conditions, nutritional stress, disease, predation or – as in this case – the loss of their primary parent. And it’s also true that there’s not always the funding or resources to capture an orphaned animal, nor a rehab center with space to take them in and care for them until they can be released back into the wild.

Yet just letting an animal that could be saved suffer and die a lingering death instead is very, very difficult for us, and that path was a no go for Masters.

“I decided to contact a WDFW wildlife conflict technician who had previously sealed some bobcat pelts for me. I wanted permission to set traps out of season. He was extremely helpful and was at my house a few hours later to assist me in setting live traps and teaching me how to call cougar cubs in hopes of catching the cub before it starved to death,” Masters said.

WDFW’s conflict techs work to reduce or prevent damage from wildlife as people not only move into critter habitat, but critters move into human habitat, a two-way street that is becoming more obvious.

“The wildlife technician, Dan Kolenberg, was friendly, helpful and educational,” Masters stated.

This spring, in just one two-plus-week stretch, Kolenberg found himself advising and helping landowners to keep deer out of a vineyard, new chestnut trees and a grain field and bears out of chicken coops and beehives – “Technician Kolenberg enjoyed his time installing the electric fence and talking to the homeowners’ kids and grandchildren about living in bear country,” WDFW reported – rescuing a bald eagle and dealing with a case of “fawn-napping.”

Masters said that Kolenberg figured the cub he’d caught on camera would survive around three weeks without its mother’s milk, and that meant time was running out if something was to be done.

“I contacted the surrounding property owners for permission to access and to set traps on their property, which they all quickly agreed to,” Masters said. “Over the next couple days, the surrounding neighbors reported back to me that they had seen multiple cubs.”

On June 26, one told Masters that they had seen three cubs, and so he and Davis went out to locate them. The three cubs were found in a small patch of timber. Masters and neighbor Bob Houglum were able to grab one of the cubs, but the other two retreated into a fissure that required Masters and Davis to crawl in. They were able to catch one, but the third escaped – “for the time being,” Masters said.

While the first two cougars got a series of taxi rides to Eastern Washington courtesy of Kolenberg and WDFW Wildlife Conflict Specialist Todd Jacobson and Statewide Bear & Cougar Specialist Rich Beausoleil, Masters set a live trap and caught the last cub on June 28. Kolenberg came out and picked up that kitten too.

Masters described all three cubs as “malnourished and scared.” At that time they would have been around 11 or 12 weeks old and without their mother for two and a half to nearly three weeks.

Unfortunately, one died after coming out of anesthesia at a local vet, where it had been taken to obtain a health certificate, an official document needed to move an animal. It’s unclear why it passed away, but according to Beausoleil, anesthesia is riskier with underweight animals and he said the cubs were all approximately 40 percent lighter than normal.

Beausoleil had already alerted zoos about the availability of the kittens, and after the Philadelphia Zoo expressed interest, he worked to transport the surviving siblings across the country via Alaska Airlines. Early last week the zoo publicly announced the arrival of the now 21- to 22-week-old male and female, and they’ll be available for viewing in September.

THE RESCUE PROVIDED A ONE-OF-A-KIND experience for Masters and everyone else involved. WDFW termed it a “whole neighborhood effort,” with 10 people lending a hand.

“I am beyond grateful to the neighbors who went above and beyond in assisting,” Masters said. “It was truly a team effort by everyone. WDFW Wildlife Conflict Technician Dan Kolenberg deserves a huge thank you for his quick response, assistance and education.”

It also is a chance to highlight how sportsmen aren’t “just a bunch of bloodthirsty killers,” he said.

“As a hunter and trapper, conservation is important to me, as it is for the majority of sportsmen,” said Masters, who cited the North America Model of Wildlife Conservation, a user-pay/public benefits concept that has been remarkably effective in bringing back once imperiled species like whitetail deer, elk, ducks and other wildlife and securing habitat for them.

Storm clouds are gathering around the model as practiced in Washington, as recent years have seen the Fish and Wildlife Commission scrap the decades-old limited-entry spring black bear hunt, some members have pooh-poohed the plight of the cougar-gnawed Blue Mountains elk herd and are mulling reducing lion and bear hunts, all while they consider a new draft Conservation Policy that has alarmed state and treaty hunters and anglers for its lack of inclusiveness and nebulous statements.

“It is important that we continue to manage predators as we have during the past century,” Masters said. “If we fail to manage them accordingly, we will continue to see more and more predators at our barns, livestock fields, local parks and even within city limits.”

For some, it might be tough to square those words as coming from someone who has just helped rescue three cougar kittens, but then again, in nature and conservation, things are rarely if ever black and white.

Sometimes they’re tawny with black, white, brown and pink highlights.