Headline: High County News, 4/1/2025
Kylie Mohr reports:
Last fall, a Clallam County, Washington, resident spotted a young male cougar walking slowly through a field on the northern edge of the Olympic Peninsula. It was the middle of the day — a clear sign that something was off — and he was also skinny and weak, dragging his matted tail in the mud.
The resident called a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) game warden and Mark Elbroch, puma director of Panthera, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting wild cats globally. (Cougars are also called mountain lions or pumas.) Elbroch and the warden approached the cougar, yelling and clapping to gauge the animal’s alertness. But even when they were less than 20 feet away, the cougar didn’t respond. “The cat was on its last legs,” Elbroch said. “He literally couldn’t even get out from this pasture.”
The cougar was euthanized, and his tissue samples, which were tested for a number of diseases, revealed the presence of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, or bird flu. Less than two weeks later, another infected cougar was found dead in Clallam County.
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