Mill Bay farm warning of fearless cougar<\/p>\n
Published 10:20 am Wednesday, December 31, 2025<\/p>\n
A family in Mill Bay is looking for solutions and safety after their pet cat was killed by a cougar on Dec. 28.<\/p>\n
Danya Hillyard and her family operate an organic hobby farm near the Brentwood Bay ferry terminal that has goats, ducks and other animals, and she said the cougar had been seen stalking the farm\u2019s animals for several days before it boldly tried to snatch the cat from the deck.<\/p>\n
Hillyard said her mother-in-law interrupted the attack and the cougar released the cat, but the beloved cat died of its injuries at the vet a few hours later.<\/p>\n
She said she expected that the cougar would have left the area while they were at the vet, but the animal was still on the property when they returned home and was spotted by her mother-in-law fearlessly looking through her windows at some rescue kittens she is looking after.<\/p>\n
Hillyard said the family haa been living on their property for 18 years and operating their farm with relatively no problems with predators until recently, even though their property is close to forests where it\u2019s known there is a cougar corridor.<\/p>\n
But she said over the past year and half, they\u2019ve had encounters with two bears and two cougars, and have lost a goat, duck and now their cat, which was a working cat as well as a pet and spent a lot of time outdoors as it dealt with rodents on the farm.<\/p>\n
Hillyard said she called conservation officers and they arrived the next morning and walked the property with bean-bag guns, but there was no sign of the cougar at that time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were very knowledgeable and said we should make the property as undesirable for the cougar as possible,\u201d she said. \u201cThey said to keep our animals and food secured, which we already are very careful about, and if we see it, we were told to be loud and big and move slowly so we would not trigger their instinct to attack by running. They also said to use air horns, bear bangers and have a paint-ball gun while on the property.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hillyard said the family has done all it can to make their animals and farm safer from predators, including keeping the animals in stalls, installing more lights and sensors around the property, as well as trail cameras in the surrounding woods, and their dogs are even now wearing collars with bells on them to make noise.<\/p>\n
She said the conversation officers said it\u2019s likely that the cougar was attracted to their farm because of their animals, and they believe it\u2019s connected to the fact that the population of deer, one of cougars\u2019 main prey, has decreased in recent years in the area.<\/p>\n
Hillyard added that she believes recent logging in the region, which has created some clear-cut areas that have resulted in a reduction of the animals\u2019 habitat, is also playing a part in bringing predators into more contact with human populations.<\/p>\n
She said that, while she appreciated the advice of the conversation officers, they were clear that they would not intervene to relocate, or euthanize, the cougars unless they prove to be a safety risk to humans, like following people, and this cougar has not proven to be threat to humans to date.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe they are doing the best they can for us, but are limited by protocols and policies,\u201d Hillyard said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe feel threatened and we fear that our animals and us are being hunted by this cougar which shows no fear of us. We are not blaming the cougar as it is only acting according to its nature, but we would appreciate some options as to how to properly deal with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Ministry of Environment acknowledged that conservation officers did visit the farm, patrolled the area and continue to monitor and respond as needed.<\/p>\n
A statement from the ministry said there have been no other reports of conflict with cougars in the area to date.<\/p>\n
The statement said that there has been no inventory of the deer populations in the Mill Bay area recently, but in the nearby Koksilah area, deer are in record low numbers and that could be playing a part in the cougar\u2019s interest in the farm.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe low number of deer in the region is due to significant winters in 2021\/2022 and 2022\/2023, as well Adeno-Hemorrhagic disease impacting deer on eastern Vancouver Island in recent years,\u201d the ministry said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the family keeps their animals secure on their farm, the cougar will have no reason to stick around and, hopefully, it will just move own.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mill Bay farm warning of fearless cougar Published 10:20 am Wednesday, December 31, 2025 A family in Mill…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-234214","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}