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A Cougar in the Streets of Wôlinak? Abenaki Police Told Residents to Stay Inside While a Thermal Drone Searched the Woods

On Sept. 28, 2026, residents of the Abenaki community of Wôlinak, Quebec, photographed what looked like a cougar. Police issued an alert, a thermal drone and cages went out, and the province's wildlife ministry took over. The animal hasn't been found, and its species hasn't been confirmed.

WÔLINAK, Quebec By Dead of Night Dispatch

Location Wôlinak, Centre-du-Québec, Quebec, Canada

Illustration: a large cat's silhouette at the edge of a dark autumn wood beside a quiet road, a drone's red light hovering above the trees

WÔLINAK, Quebec (Sept. 28–30, 2026) — On Monday, Sept. 28, 2026, people in Wôlinak, an Abenaki community in Quebec’s Centre-du-Québec region, saw something they didn’t expect to see on their streets. According to the reports that followed, it looked like a cougar.

VideoUn cougar aperçu dans les rues de Wôlinak? (our translation: A cougar spotted in the streets of Wôlinak?)TVA Nouvelles, on YouTube, . Watch on YouTube

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Where it started

The original social media post

  1. Corps de police des Abénakis @policeAbenakis

    Un cougar a été aperçu dans les rues de Wôlinak. La situation est actuellement en cours et mobilise nos équipes sur place. Par mesure de sécurité, nous demandons à tous les résidents de rester confinés à l'intérieur de leur domicile jusqu'à nouvel ordre. Veuillez éviter tout déplacement inutile dans les rues. […]

    Our translation A cougar has been seen in the streets of Wôlinak. The situation is ongoing, and our teams are on site. As a safety measure, we ask all residents to stay inside their homes until further notice. Please avoid any unnecessary travel in the streets. […]

    The police force's first alert, headed “AVIS URGENT : PRÉSENCE D'UN COUGAR À WÔLINAK” (Urgent notice: cougar in Wôlinak). It posted an update about an hour and 20 minutes later.

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By the next morning, the community’s police force had told residents to stay home, travel by car if they had to go out, and bring their pets inside. A drone with a thermal camera was sweeping the woods, and wildlife officers were setting out cages. Quebec has no known breeding population of cougars, and only one confirmed wild case on record.

(Quotations from the French-language coverage are our translations.)

What we know

On the record: documents, statements, dates and places. Sources below.

  • The alert. Noovo Info reported on Sept. 29 that residents had seen “what looks like a cougar” on Monday, Sept. 28. The Abenaki police force issued an alert about the “sighting of a cougar directly in the streets,” asking people to stay inside and keep their pets in. Police reminded residents that cougars are nocturnal and that the risk of an attack is greater at night.
  • The photos. Éric Cloutier, director of the Abenaki police force, told Le Nouvelliste that the force had received photos from residents that “confirm” the sighting. “We hope it isn’t a hoax,” he said, “but for the moment, we consider it real.” Le Nouvelliste published one image, credited to the Wôlinak Abenaki Council, of an animal it described as prowling at the edge of the woods.
  • On the ground. Wildlife officers were searching for tracks behind the house where the animal was seen on the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 29, Le Nouvelliste reported, and a tracking dog might be called in. Cloutier said the population wasn’t panicking. “We want them to take safety measures so there are no unfortunate events,” he said.
  • The search. According to Le Nouvelliste, the Bureau Environnement et Terre in the neighboring Abenaki community of Odanak lent a drone equipped with a thermal camera, Cloutier said police thought the animal was “in the woods near the casino,” and that wildlife officers were to set cages to try to capture it. “Ideally, we’re not going to try to chase it,” he said.
  • The ministry. Quebec’s wildlife ministry (the MELCCFP) said its job was to “locate the animal, identify it and take the necessary measures,” Noovo reported. Ministry teams weren’t able to locate the animal on Tuesday, Le Nouvelliste reported on Sept. 30. “Several actions will be deployed to locate the animal or gather clues on the ground, such as the use of a drone, the installation of hair traps and other strategies adapted to the situation,” said regional ministry spokesperson Louis Potvin. The ministry asked people not to try to find or capture the animal themselves. Le Courrier Sud reported that the ministry was taking over the follow-up.
  • The alert lifted. On Wednesday morning, Sept. 30, the stay-indoors recommendation was lifted, Le Nouvelliste and Le Courrier Sud reported. The animal had not been located. The Abenaki police still asked residents to stay vigilant and to avoid going into the woods unless necessary.
  • Not yet confirmed. As of the Sept. 30 reports, there was no hair sample, DNA result or capture confirming what the animal was. The ministry told Noovo that a bobcat, or even a house cat, can be mistaken for a cougar, “since scale is sometimes misleading in photos.”

What’s claimed

Accounts, testimony and theories, as told by the people who tell them.

  • What residents saw. The core of the case is the residents’ sighting and their photos, which police said they were treating as genuine. In the coverage we read, no officer is reported to have seen the animal.
  • Where it might have come from. If it is a cougar, Le Nouvelliste reported, the most plausible explanation is that it escaped from a zoo or was lost or released by someone keeping a cougar illegally, as in the 1992 case. The paper said it could also have migrated from Western Canada, where breeding populations live.

A rare animal in Quebec

The cougar has a strange official life in Quebec. Le Nouvelliste reported that it has been listed since 1992 as “likely to be designated threatened or vulnerable,” and that the province has logged “a few hundred observations” since 1955. A 1998 assessment by the national wildlife committee COSEPAC found the data insufficient, the paper said, and the eastern cougar was declared extinct about 15 years ago.

Only one case has been confirmed in the province. According to Noovo, it was in Abitibi-Témiscamingue in 1992, and DNA showed the animal was of South American origin, likely an escapee. On Sept. 30, Le Nouvelliste described the sighting as considered “extremely rare” in Quebec, “and even more so in Centre-du-Québec.”

Fatal attacks are extremely rare. Le Nouvelliste reported that none has been recorded in Quebec, and that seven are counted in Canada since 1949, the last in Banff National Park in 2001.

What’s next

For two days, a small Abenaki community lived with the possibility of a big cat in its backyards. The alert is over, but the question isn’t. With the ministry now in charge of the file, the hair traps are the best hope of an answer. A single hair could settle whether Wôlinak had a cougar, a bobcat or something more ordinary walking its streets.

Until then, what’s on the record is a set of residents’ photos, a police force that took them seriously, and an animal that slipped back into the woods before anyone could say for sure what it was.

Sources

  1. Un cougar à Wôlinak? La communauté abénaquise en état d'alerte (French) — Noovo Info Laurie Gervais, Sept. 29, 2026.
  2. Un cougar en liberté à Wôlinak (French) — Le Nouvelliste Sébastien Lacroix, Sept. 29, 2026.
  3. Cougar à Wôlinak: l’état d’alerte est levé (French) — Le Nouvelliste Sébastien Lacroix, Sept. 30, 2026.
  4. Cougar à Wôlinak : La recommandation est levée (French) — Le Courrier Sud Nayeli Chavez, Sept. 30, 2026.