Cougar blamed for killing 3 sheep and an emu on Vancouver Island

A cougar plays with a piece of wool at the Parque de las Leyendas Zoo, in Lima, Peru, Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2020. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

PARKSVILLE — Residents of a Vancouver Island community are sounding the alarm after blaming an aggressive cougar for killing three sheep and an emu in the past week.

The owners of the Truffle Farm in Parksville, B.C., about 155 kilometres northwest of Victoria, say they found two of their sheep dead from an apparent cougar attack Saturday morning.

The farm says the neighbouring property then had a sheep killed the next night and an emu the night after that, prompting people in the community to start patrolling the area in an effort to ward off the animal.

Virginia Brietzke, who owns the Truffle Farm with her husband, says they’ve slept very little since Saturday as they patrol their fenced property in an effort to protect their animals.

Brietzke says she’s especially worried about potential danger to humans, since children from a nearby elementary school take nature walks every week in the woods next to the farm and the area has a cheese maker and draws significant foot traffic from tourists.

She says they and their neighbours have reported their animals’ deaths to authorities, and were told to install a motion sprinkler to deter the cougar, get a guard dog or keep their animals in a barn.

The B.C. Conservation Officer Service did not immediately return a request for information from The Canadian Press.

“We’re such a big flock, we don’t have a huge barn for all of the animals,” Brietzke says she told a conservation officer. “We have lots of little sheds, so we asked if he’d be able to come in, you know, take a look — and he said no.”

Brietzke says she has slept “probably four or five hours” since first finding the two dead sheep on Saturday morning.

She adds that she and her husband spotted the cougar on their patrol, and her husband was able to get within a few feet of the animal, showing it was “tame” in terms of not being afraid of people.

“If it’s that tame, not scared of people, there’s problems with potentially it thinking humans are about the same size as our sheep,” Brietzke says. “Actually, my sheep are bigger than me, so I would be a snack for them.”

This report by Chuck Chiang, The Canadian Press, was first published April 22, 2026.