The Lynx that has been stalking around Yellowknife the past couple of days has been killed by Environment and Natural Resources officers.
Environment and Natural Resources spokesperson Mike Wetwick “confirmed that ENR officers in the North Slave region located and dispatched the Lynx near the Yellowknife Solid Waste Facility.”
“ENR’s preference is to catch and move wildlife out of the city whenever possible, but in this case the animal had to be dispatched for public safety reasons,” Westwick wrote in an email.
Westweick said the fact the lynx was “very likely the one connected to multiple interactions that put local residents or their pets in danger” and that the lynx “continued to show no hesitancy in actively interacting with people or traffic” meant the ENR officers decided to kill the animal.
The lynx was first spotted Monday, in several spots throughout the city, including walk outside Avens Manor. One Yellowknife resident wrote on Facebook it seemed the lynx “didn’t even care if vehicles were coming towards it.”
There were reports of a woman wrestling the lynx off of her dog on Tuesday on the trails around Tin Can hill.
The carcass will be necropsied — like an autopsy for animals — by an ENR veterinarian and a biologist to assess the lynx’s health and if it was carrying any diseases, according to Westwick.
