Hospital workers got an up close and personal view of wildlife when they spotted a cougar sitting on a garden box outside the building at the Port Hardy Hospital.
Hospital employee Danielle Nye snapped photos of the animal during the Tuesday morning sighting and uploaded them on Facebook, where they were quickly shared to the community’s North Island Wildlife Awareness Facebook group.
“Just another average day at the hospital in Port Hardy…” wrote Nye in the post.
RCMP and Conservation were called to the scene.
The cougar was also spotted around 10:45 a.m. crossing the highway near Klassen’s Car Dealership, a few blocks away, before it was spotted at the hospital around noon.
This sighting comes after many cougar sightings that have been ongoing in communities throughout the North Island.
In late March and early April, a cougar reportedly attacked and killed a dog at the Cluxewe Resort near Port McNeill and another cougar killed a dog in the Village of Port Alice.
North Island communities have been on alert since late December and early January when a dog was killed in Port Hardy after multiple cougar sightings.
According to the Vancouver Island Wilderness and Historical Conservation, “Of the estimated 4,000 cougars in Canada, 3,500 live in BC.
Of this, nearly a quarter reside on Vancouver Island (itself only representing 3 per cent of BC’s land area), resulting in the highest concentration of cougars in the world.”
