On Sunday, July 1st, the park received a report from Lincoln County dispatch of a cougar stalking children in a cove on the Spokane arm of the lake. District ranger Chris Rugel and ranger Adam Kelsey responded by vessel and met two Lincoln County deputies who were already on scene at the Ponderosa boat-in campground. The rangers interviewed the family members, who reported hearing a cougar “screaming” just above their primitive campsite on a steep embankment during the previous two nights. One of them described a loud rustling noise in the large willow bush just behind their tent that night. At approximately 10 a.m. on Sunday morning, the mother was with her six-year-old son about 30 yards up the draw from the campsite when she heard something in the bushes and saw a large cougar in a “crouched position.” She said that the cougar stared at her, then looked towards her son, who was five feet from the cougar. She started yelling for her husband and waving her arms at the cougar. As the others from the site approached, the cougar ran off up the hillside. Around noon, family members again sighted a cougar while packing up to leave the campsite. Shortly thereafter, their eight-year-old daughter came running down to the beach, screaming. The cougar leaped off the hillside and chased her a short distance until halting when family members came running to the girl’s rescue. The cougar ran off after the father threw a large stick at it. The campground and surrounding beaches were closed to camping. A Washington state wildlife officer went up the hillside to the east of the campsite to try and locate the cougar. Kelsey and chief ranger Margaret Goodro hiked up the steep embankment to the west and came to a flat meadow that overlooked the draw coming up from the campsite. They found cougar tracks at the edge of the hill, and Goodro heard a noise in the grass directly behind her. When she turned, she saw a cougar crouched in the grass six to eight feet from them. Both rangers fired their weapons at the cougar, killing it. The cougar was found to be an underweight juvenile female, about a year-and-a-half old. The cougar was released to Washington State Fish and Wildlife to perform a necropsy. The campground and surrounding beaches were reopened.
