Northern Ontario wildlife researchers capture rare cougar sighting

Officials from a national park in northern Ontario say they are excited after capturing rare photos of their first cougar sighting.

The team stitched 20 photos together to make a short video showing the cougar's movement across the snow. Earlier this week, the park posted it on social media and it gained a lot of attention.

Chad O'Halloran, of Pukaskwa National Park, told CTV News in a phone interview, they have two dozen motion-activated trail cameras in the backcountry that are used to study wildlife and the team was surprised to find the big, endangered wildcat -- which is also known as a mountain lion or puma -- among thousands of photos.

Photos of the cougar were discovered a few months ago when wildlife technicians were going through the photos collected in January 2021. The SD cards are collected and camera batteries changed once a year and O'Halloran said it takes quite a bit of time to go through them.

Because there have been so few confirmed cougar sightings in the north, Daniel Pouliot, the park's resource conservation manager, told CTV News in a phone interview he was very skeptical when he heard the news.

Lyndsay Davidson, a spokesperson for the Ontario Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, told CTV News in an email cougar sightings are extremely rare.

"Each year the ministry may receive a few reports but photographic evidence is rarely available to confirm these sightings," Davidson said.

O'Halloran said the team searched the other SD cards and found images of the same cougar captured on another camera about 15 kilometres away from where it was first seen within about three weeks.

PREVIOUS SIGHTINGS IN THE NORTHWEST

There have been three other confirmed sightings in the northwest part of the province, Davidson said.

The first confirmed sighting in Ontario involved the frozen remains of a cougar found northwest of Thunder Bay in March 2017.

"Genetic results showed it was closely related to animals from the Black Hills region of Wyoming, South Dakota and Nebraska," Davidson said.

"On Dec. 19, 2021, a video was shared on social media of what appeared to be a cougar bounding across a remote road north of Kenora."

A trail camera near Thunder Bay captured a series of photos of a male cougar between November 2020 and January 2021.

Pouliot said the closest breeding grounds are in the Dakotas, Minnesota and even Manitoba.

He said they do not believe there is a breeding population in Ontario at the moment, but it is hard to confirm.

Male cougars can have a home range of 500 square kilometres while females' are usually less than 200 square kilometres.

Pouliot said his team is hoping to find out if the cougar has established itself in the park or was just passing through looking for new territory.

"It is amazing such a large animal can stay unseen in this area, which is a sign the park is doing its job at protecting land for wildlife," he said.

They are working on going through the SD cards from the 2021-2022 winter and are hoping to know more sometime this fall. Usually a winter project, they would like to have more answers sooner.

Pouliot said the cameras were originally intended to study wolves and other wildlife. He also said while they haven't seen caribou in the park since 2015, they continue to monitor a known calving ground.

The park has been in communication with the province and that it has opened the door for more collaboration, he added.

The three-season park was established in 1983 and is located on the northeastern shore of Lake Superior near Marathon, Ont. It is a 3.5-hour drive from Thunder Bay and a five-hour drive from Sault Ste. Marie and includes boreal forest.