Real-Life Decision Making -- Solution
You decide to drug the cougar and try to relocate it.
After all, you feel badly for the animal, and so does the crowd of people waiting at the gate to the park. They're not going to be too happy if you kill this cougar.
You drug the cougar and it falls from the tree, breaking its leg. It spends a month in a veterinary hospital before being released in the wild again. Shortly after the animal is relocated, it returns to the same area and mauls a small child.
Again, you end up tracking the cougar through the same park with dogs. This time you have no choice but to kill the animal. You realize that if you'd killed the cougar to begin with, you could have spared the child this agony.
"I guess people who don't do this job would have tried to save the cougar, because obviously this would make you look better," says conservation officer Duncan Douglass. "A conservation officer should never put popularity before a wise decision. Ultimately, you have to look out for human lives first."