Originally posted by calyth
Esav: Benton Lam is yours truly 
Congratulations!
You wrote very well. Actually, most of the responses were pretty good, even the dumb ones had a clear and occassionally reasonable point of view. I wonder what the paper might have declined to print, though.
By the way, one of my other forums mentioned the story, and a follow-up -
http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/story.asp?id={5BDD4970-8DEF-44A2-B3A4-5463FDD19BF3}
Oops! Bad link. Edited to add the story:
Vancouver Island is top cougar country
Jeremy Sandler
Vancouver Sun
Saturday, August 03, 2002
Vancouver Island is the most dangerous place in British Columbia for cougar attacks on humans.
On Thursday, a cougar jumped Dave Parker from behind while he walked along an industrial road two kilometres south of Port Alice. The attack, which Parker survived by slicing the animal's throat with his pocket knife, occurred near to another remarkable struggle between a cougar and human last year.
In February 2001, Port Alice mill worker Elliot Cole used his lunch pail, a bicycle and his bare fists to rescue American tug boat captain Jon Nostdal from the clutches of a hungry cougar, who pounced on Nostdal as he was riding his bicycle in the area.
While cougar maulings are rare -- there have been just 71 such attacks reported in the province since 1900 -- more than half of them have occurred on Vancouver Island. In June, Chuck Hilsabeck of Reno, Nev. rescued his eight-year-old daughter Rita from the jaws of a hungry cat on a beach off Port McNeill. The girl, who was on a kayaking trip with her family, escaped with minor injuries.
Lance Sundquist, a regional enforcement manager with the water, land and air protection ministry, said 39 of the 71 attacks, including five deaths, happened on the island, which at 31,300 square kilometres in size is a fraction of B.C.'s total land mass of 947,800 square kilometres.
Sundquist said one factor in the fact that a higher percentage of attacks occur on Vancouver Island is that with somewhere between 800 and 1,200 cats (they are notoriously difficult to count), the island has a much higher cougar density than any other part of B.C. An estimated total of 4,000 to 6,000 cougars live in the province.
Another reason is that on the island, particularly around north island communities, there is no buffer zone between cities and towns and the neighbouring wilderness.
"There's a lot of underbrush right next door to the communities where you would expect to find cougars living," he said.
The frequency of cougars attacks has increased over the last three decades, Sundquist said.
"Since 1970, we have seen an increase in the number of attacks that have occurred," he said. "I think that could be somewhat attributed to better reporting -- that's always something that you have to look at -- and, possibly, the other factor may be related to more activity by humans in the outdoors; more people out recreating in the wilderness areas, et cetera."
Cougars are known to feed on any number of animals, including elk, raccoons, rodents, domestic pets and farm animals, but their primary food source is deer.
While Sundquist admitted the island's deer population has declined in recent years, he didn't think a lack of deer made hungry cougars attack people.
"I wouldn't want to draw that linkage, because we've seen in years in fact where the deer populations have been very healthy where there have been incidents of attacks on people as well," Sundquist said.
Other cougar attacks that made headlines include a 1994 incident in which John Musselman saved his then seven-year-old son Kyle after a cougar ripped off most of the boy's scalp in an attack outside the family's Gold River home on Vancouver Island.
In August 1996, Cindy Parolin of Tulameen, saved her six-year-old son from a cougar attack near Princeton. But while two of the boy's siblings carried him to safety, the cougar attacked and killed Parolin, 36.
Other cougar-related fatalities in B.C. since 1949:
- June 1949: A cougar mauls Dominic Taylor, 7, of Kyuquot, 150 kilometres north of Tofino, while he walked on the beach. The cat dragged the child into the bush and was later scared off by the boy's father, who heard his son's cries for help, but was too late to save him.
- January 1971: Lawrence Wells, 12, is killed by a cougar while playing with his sisters near his Lytton home. The boy's father shoots the cougar, but Lawrence is already dead.
- July 1976: Matilda May Samuel, 7, of Port Alberni is killed while picking berries along a gravel road near Gold River.
- May 1988: Jesse Sky Bergman, 9, is visiting his father near Tofino when his badly mauled body is found. Pawprints indicated the cat had stalked the boy.
- May 1992: Schoolboy Jeremy Williams, 7, of Kyuquot is attacked and killed by a yearling female cougar in front of horrified classmates as he plays on the edge of the school yard.
© Copyright 2002 Vancouver Sun
