The Illinois Department of Natural Resources is defending a conservation police officer's decision to fatally shoot a cougar in Whiteside County after it was found hiding near a farmhouse.
The encounter Wednesday near Morrison, about 130 miles west of Chicago, that left the animal dead was the first confirmed sighting of a cougar in Illinois since November 2012.
Chris McCloud, spokesman for the IDNR, said the conservation officer at the scene is responsible for determining whether an animal poses a threat to public safety. In this case, McCloud said, the officer decided it was a public safety issue because the cougar was very close to a residence.
"Public safety is what we’ll make the decision on every time," he said.
Before deciding to euthanize an animal, the IDNR considers other options, including tranquilizing and relocating the animal, McCloud said.
Conservation officers do not carry tranquilizers because they aren’t trained to handle the chemical and assess the proper dosage so that they don’t inadvertently harm or kill the animal, McCloud said. Calling in a veterinarian equipped to tranquilize the cougar wasn’t an option in this case because of the safety risk, he said.
However, the same safety risks means the IDNR wouldn’t consider relocating a cougar, a predatory animal not protected by state conservation law, McCloud said.
When asked whether there are any alternatives to killing cougars, McCloud said "that’s a good question. There is no specific answer. You would have to have someone that would take the animal."
He said that situation had never come up.
But Bruce Patterson, Curator of Mammals at the Field Museum who studies large cats, said he didn’t see evidence the cougar in Whitefield County was a threat.
Patterson said Chicago police had no option but to shoot a cougar found on Chicago’s North Side in 2008, because it was in the middle of a crowded city and near an elementary school.
"But I can’t figure out why this animal had to be shot," he said.
He said reports that the cougar was found in a concrete tunnel in a corn crib suggest it was looking for a safe place to hide during the day, and didn’t indicate an imminent threat.
"It’s possible to manage wildlife while still keeping it around," Patterson said.
The family that spotted the cougar Wednesday, however, felt the cougar was a threat. A farmer near Morrison called authorities about 2 p.m. Wednesday after he saw a large cat leaving a corn field and running toward the farmhouse and other buildings, according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
A conservation officer arrived at the farm and found the owner's wife in the home, safe, made sure that horses in a nearby barn and horse lot were unharmed and then found the cougar in a concrete tunnel under the corn crib, the department said.
The farmer asked that the animal be killed, and the officer consulted with law enforcement and wildlife personnel and talked with the farmer's wife. Officials decided to kill the animal and the officer used his state-issued rifle, according to the department.
The officer estimated it weighed more than 100 pounds and was almost 6 feet in length. Wildlife biologists were expected to conduct a necropsy.
Cougars have not been known to live in Illinois since 1870 and are not protected by state conservation law. No confirmed cougar encounter with humans has taken place since 2008, although trail cameras in Jo Daviess, Morgan, Pike and Calhoun counties captured photographs of a cougar or cougars in the fall of 2012, according to the Natural Resources Department.
Before Wednesday, the last time a confirmed cougar was encountered in Illinois was when a male cougar was shot and killed in the Roscoe Village neighborhood in 2008. Prior to that, a male was killed by a hunter in Mercer County in 2004, and a male was killed by a train in 2002.
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