Two kittens orphaned when their mom was killed by a hunter near Canmore have been captured.
Canmore wildlife photographer John Marriott, co-founder of Exposed Wildlife Conservancy, said he came across the kittens in a tree on Friday (Feb. 14) and four hours later they were captured by Alberta Fish and Wildlife officers.
He said they are currently awaiting placement in a shelter or zoo.
“Friday was a bittersweet day for me and a sad one for the Bow Valley as I encountered our two orphaned little kittens for the first – and last – time in the Canmore wilderness,” he said in a social media post.
“They are the 6th and 7th cougars to be lost from our ecosystem since May 2024. I can’t even describe in words just how devastating this is.”
Provincial wildlife officials are investigating the circumstances that led to two cougar kittens being orphaned and left to fend for themselves after their mother was killed earlier this week by hunters near Grotto Mountain east of Canmore.
It is illegal to hunt a young cougar with spotted fur, or a female cougar accompanied by a young cougar with spotted fur. As the investigation is ongoing, the province is unable to release further details at this stage.
Regardless of whether the kittens had spots or not, Marriott questions the ethics of hunting young kittens.
“There were tracks everywhere so they would have known,” he said.
Anyone with information about this incident can contact the Fish and Wildlife office in Cochrane at: 403-932-2388, the 24-hour Report a Poacher line at: 1-800-642-3800, or online at https://www.alberta.ca/report-poacher.aspx.
The province says four cougars have been killed in the Bow Valley this hunting season by licensed Alberta residents and all have been registered with Fish and Wildlife Enforcement Services, whose officers inspect the cougars to determine if they have been taken in accordance with current hunting regulations.
Marriott discovered the kittens had been orphaned on Monday (Feb. 10) when he went out to check his trail cameras on the benchlands to the east of Canmore, between the townsite and Gap Lake along Highway 1A.
Before long, he came across a dead bighorn sheep 25 metres off the road by Bighorn Meadows, about five kms east of Canmore. He quickly determined, however, the sheep had been killed by a cougar, not struck by a vehicle.
Staking out the area in case the cougars came back to feed, Marriott soon noticed two or three men and a few dogs coming through the trees toward trucks and realized it was a hunting outfit with cougar hounds.
Following cougar tracks, and following the bloodstained snow, he found the location where he believes the female cougar drew her last breath. There were tracks everywhere, and he initially thought there was one orphaned kitten.
However, in the coming days, he put several other trail cameras on the slopes of the mountain, which revealed there were two kittens.
The province was not immediately available to speak to the capture of the kittens.
In 2024, the province of Alberta under Alberta Parks Minister Todd Loewen, himself a hunter and whose family owns a hunting outfitter business, expanded the hunting quota for cougars.
The province has added new wildlife management units to allow hound hunting in more areas of Alberta.
Previous quotas were carefully established to manage the cougar population, maintain a stable age structure and reduce conflict. These recent expansions go against years of science-based management.
However, a statement posted online following condemnation of the hunting rules, Loewen said as with all wildlife in Alberta, cougar populations need to be managed, and hunting plays a key role in that.
“Hunting regulations and quotas are regularly updated to help prevent human-cougar conflicts, which can increase if populations are left unchecked – and it’s something many Albertans are well familiar with,” said Loewen.
“Managing predator populations is also an important part of protecting threatened species like caribou, and big game animals like bighorn sheep, moose and elk.”
The number of cougars hunted in Alberta from April 1 2023 to March 31, 2024, was 103, which includes resident and non-resident hunters. Of the 103, 26 were female.
