The third cougar seen roaming near Hendricks Park may be far away, wildlife officials said, so on Friday they removed the trap that captured what they believe to be the male cougar’s mother and brother.

A young male cougar’s range is upwards of 100 square miles, according to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. A restless young male will be on the move more than 71 percent of the time.

“It may have left the area,” spokeswoman Michelle Dennehy said. “We’re not going to keep trapping something if it has not been seen for several days.”

After a cougar killed a Hendricks Park neighbor’s goats and chickens in mid-March, the agency live-trapped a mother cougar on March 12 and what it identified as one of its offspring on March 14.

Agency officials decided the best recourse was to shoot the female. The mother cougar was 84 pounds, and officials determined that it had finished nursing cubs but two offspring were still traveling with their mother.

Cougar cubs generally are born in twos or threes and they stay with their mothers for nine to 21 months, according to the agency’s management plan.

A male, believed to be about 6 months old, that was captured in the same trap as its mother weighed 40 pounds. Officials gave it a lethal injection.

The homeowner who lost the goats and chickens will get both of the animals’ hides, as required by Oregon law.

The Department of Fish and Wildlife got emails for and against the cougar trap-and-kill operation.

“People have strong feelings on both sides and we did hear from some of those people,” Dennehy said. “We haven’t been inundated with calls by any means.”

The department doesn’t as a matter of policy relocate the cougars it traps for a couple of reasons, Dennehy said. If they have attacked livestock, “that would just move the problem elsewhere,” she said.

Secondly, it would be hard for the agency to find a place in Oregon that wouldn’t impinge on another cougar’s territory.

Cougars disperse widely — so widely that they’re found all over North, Central and South America. When male cougars become independent, they travel great distances to find a mate.

An estimated 5,700 cougars live in Oregon, according to the department. They favor the McKenzie River Valley because it has forested slopes with plenty of deer for prey. People rarely see them.

“Cougars are very difficult to observe and count due to their secretive nature and characteristic low population density, which leads many people to believe they are few in number,” according to the agency’s management plan.

Sometimes they eat livestock or less frequently, pets, Dennehy said. They rarely attack people. “It’s never happened in Oregon,” she said.

So, people who take their families to the traditional Mother’s Day rhododendron blossom viewing at Hendricks Park won’t have to worry too much about getting eaten by a cougar, Dennehy said, although, she said, it wouldn’t hurt to keep dogs on leashes and children close.

When the agency kills a mother cougar, and the offspring are still kittens, the agency sometimes can find a zoo to take them. But when they are older, they’re not easy to place, Dennehy said.

The agency won’t hand a cougar to just anyone. The receiving institution has to be accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

Older cougars don’t adjust well to life behind bars, and those trapped in Eugene were beyond the age of saving, Dennehy said.

“They get very stressed out. They exhibit strange behaviors. They’ll try to gnaw their way out.

“These cougars were too old. They had already become accustomed to living in the wild. They weren’t candidates for a captive life,” she said.