May 12, 2026
The Southern BC Cougar Project with Siobhan Darlington
Cougars are an important but understudied game species in British Columbia and are the main predators of mule deer. The Southern BC Cougar Project (www.bccougarproject.weebly.com) was launched in 2019 to capture, GPS-collar, and track adult cougars across three regions of the southern interior to better understand their demography, reproduction, habitat use, and diet. Over six years, our team monitored 56 cougars, tagged 62 kittens from 27 litters, and documented 916 confirmed cougar kills across the landscape. We found that males had significantly lower survival than females, with mortality risk doubling near urban areas. Female cougars had smaller litters than those reported elsewhere (averaging two kittens per litter). Males most often killed adult moose and elk, while females mainly preyed on deer; however, in summer, small prey made up nearly half of kills for both sexes. Cougars most often killed large ungulates along the edges of regenerating cutblocks and burns that were 10–20 years old during spring, summer, and fall. These findings fill major knowledge gaps in cougar ecology in BC, provide valuable baseline data for wildlife management, and highlight key threats to both cougars and their prey on the landscape.
Dr. Siobhan Darlington, RPBio (she/her) is a carnivore biologist specializing in the roles of landscape change in shaping predator-prey dynamics. Originally from Nova
Scotia, she has studied cougars, white-tailed deer, caribou, grizzly bear, and songbirds across western Canada and the maritime provinces in the past 10+ years. In her spare time, she and her partner David are naturalists, avid bird watchers, and bird banders at Vaseux Lake Bird Observatory near OK Falls.