RWED officer "chasing ghosts"
Terry Halifax
Northern News Services
Fort Simpson (May 21/01) - Rumours are again flying around Fort Smith about a cougar on the prowl.
The most recent unconfirmed sightings are of a cougar with two cubs.
Renewable Resource officer Mike Labine says they have only had one official sighting this year.
Following that sighting and the subsequent media attention, Labine said the office received many crank calls reporting cougar sightings.
"I doubt very much that a mother cougar would bring cubs into town, but if there's something fresh, I'd sure like to know about it," Labine said. "It's not all coffee shop talk and there have been legitimate sightings in Fort Smith."
"There was one in the tree in Lou Comin's backyard."
He said there have also been sightings as far north as in Nahanni National park, but he thinks many of the latest Smith sightings are from a act of a different colour.
"There is a big lynx around town. If people aren't paying attention and they just see it hop across the road they might think it's a cougar," he said.
"There are definite differences between lynx and a cougar."
While the big cats are rare to the north, Labine says it's not unlikely we could start to see more cougars in the NWT.
"As the territory is being depleted where they normally live, they move on and their range is 150 square miles," he said.
The cougar sighted earlier this year rekindled the talk of previous sightings, but Labines cautions people "crying wolf," as when he's out checking out a false report a real one may come in and put people at risk.
"If people have problem wildlife, they should be talking to us," he said.
" Talking about it in the coffee shop and telling us about it three or four days after the fact makes it impossible for us to find out if it's true or not."
