As avian flu continues to spread to new species, it has killed two wild cougars on the Olympic Peninsula.
The fatalities were confirmed Thursday by Panthera, a global wild cat conservation organization, and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Around the same time, one of the large cats was discovered nearby, while the other was being tracked with a collar. The number of other cougars or other species that might be sick on the peninsula is unknown because the locations of the majority of animals are not monitored. According to Mark Elbroch, director of Panthera’s puma program (puma is another name for mountain lion, or cougar), it is one of the reasons these deaths are so alarming.
According to Elbroch, the fact that cougars are top carnivores begs the question of how common the disease is further down the food chain. It raises eyebrows and makes one question if it’s a sign of a larger, unseen trend. It’s concerning.
Washington has been experiencing the virus, commonly known as Type A H5N1, since at least 2022, when the state Department of Agriculture certified that it was present in multiple backyard flocks of chickens. WDFW confirmed incidences of the illness in wild birds shortly after. In 2024, bird flu killed more than half of a colony of terns at Port Townsend. In 2023, the disease spread from seabirds to harbor seals, and the first recorded case of marine mammals dying from it on the West Coast occurred.
According to department data, 14 confirmed and probable cases of the virus had been identified as of early November, with the first human cases being reported in the state in October. The interaction with poultry was the cause of those cases. There is currently no proof that avian flu is spread from person to person in Washington.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is little chance that the virus will harm people.
A state of emergency was proclaimed by California authorities this month due to the outbreak of avian flu. The virus was detected for the first time in U.S. dairy cows last March, and since then it has been confirmed in at least 866 herds in 16 states, according to The Associated Press, and more than 60 people in eight states have also been infected.
The first sick peninsula cougar, a wild uncollared male about 2 to 3 years old, was reported by a resident near Blyn, Clallam County, after it was seen weak and semicollapsed in a pasture. The disease had so sickened the animal it was emaciated and suffering to the point of being unable to jump a three-strand barbed wire fence, normally just a hop for so powerful an animal.
Elbroch claimed that it was unable to raise its tail at all. All he was doing was pulling it through the muck and water. He was a living ghost who had just lost all of his cougarness. WDFW put the animal out of its agony by euthanizing it. Testing revealed that avian flu was the cause of death.
The second animal was also a young male, about 2 1/2 years old, that had been fitted with a tracking collar by Panthera. According to Elbroch, the animal was dead when the signal revealed no movement for eight hours. From the collar data, Panthera researchers knew he had been regularly foraging on the beaches west of Port Angeles to Clallam Bay, as well as in the forest, eating everything from seal pups snagged off the beach to seabirds in addition to forest prey.
The disease pathway is not from one cougar to another, but rather from eating something that in turn had become infected from something it ate. Raccoons are a common food for cougars and raccoons not sick enough to die could have been a vector of the disease to the cougar, Elbroch said. Or, the cougar could have eaten an infected seabird.
Unlike the first cougar, Zepplin, as the collared cat was called, looked perfect, healthy and strong … yet he was dead, Elbroch said. Testing of the brain stem confirmed the disease. Sometimes animals die so quickly from the disease they do not even display symptoms, he explained.
The disease is bad news for a population already in trouble, Elbroch said, because the population is isolated, with a lower genetic diversity and higher rates of inbreeding, which can increase susceptibility to disease.
That said, people are the leading cause of death for Washington s cougars, due to everything from hunting, to vehicle collisions, to conflicts with humans, especially their livestock, resulting in lethal removals by WDFW.
The CDC has stated that as the viruses continue to evolve, other mammals may be infected so this latest development is not surprising, said Staci Lehman, director of communications for the WDFW, in an email.
Since 2023, WDFW has confirmed cases of H5N1 in striped skunks and a bobcat in northeast Washington, harbor seals in Puget Sound, and raccoons in various areas, in addition to the recent raccoon and cougar cases. H5N1 has also been detected in red foxes, striped skunks, and bobcats in other North American states, the department wrote in a recent report.
To protect pets, don t let them scavenge dead animals, the department advises. To protect yourself, avoid handling any sick or dead animals.
As the disease spreads WDFW asks people to report sick or dead animals they encounter on the department s online survey form so biologists can investigate the deaths and take samples for testing.
___
(c)2024 The Seattle Times
Visit The Seattle Times at www.seattletimes.com
Distributed byTribune Content Agency, LLC.
Note: Every piece of content is rigorously reviewed by our team of experienced writers and editors to ensure its accuracy. Our writers use credible sources and adhere to strict fact-checking protocols to verify all claims and data before publication. If an error is identified, we promptly correct it and strive for transparency in all updates, feel free to reach out to us via email. We appreciate your trust and support!