A 2-year-old cougar was euthanized in The Dalles Tuesday after the big cat made its way into a downtown hotel, officials said.

The death of the animal marks the second mountain lion put down by the agency in over the last week.

Around 9:30 a.m., police in The Dalles responded to reports of the animal at the Oregon Motor Motel on W 2nd Street, a short distance from Highway 84 and the Columbia River waterfront. The cougar was reported to be in a small room that was under construction at the end of a narrow hallway, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said in a statement.

Officials from the agency and determined the animal was secure in the room. They were able to sedate the cougar with a dart gun through a vent in the wall and removed the animal to a safe location where it was euthanized after it was determined to be a safety risk to the public..

The same cougar had been spotted near the motel on Sunday, the agency said in a statement.

"(A) cougar coming this far into downtown, into the business district and deep into a hotel complex, and not showing fear of people or wariness of urban environments? That's just extremely odd," Jeremy Thompson, ODFW district wildlife biologist, said in a statement. "This may have been a cougar that was unable to establish its own home range in its natural habitat.

"Considering this cougar's concerning behavior, it was deemed a public safety risk not suitable for relocation, and so it was euthanized," he added.

With the Silverton cougar's death, Tuesday morning's incident marks the sixth cougar to be put down by state officials this year. Once an animal has exhibited unsafe behavior — showing no fear of humans or breaking into buildings — it cannot be relocated, the agency said.

"Cougars that have shown these behaviors and are relocated are likely to return to where they were causing problems in the first place and repeat the same behaviors," the agency's statement read. "Further, because cougars are territorial, relocating cougars to new habitat can lead to conflict with other already established cougars, resulting in an animal's injury or death.

The population of mountain lions in Oregon dwindled to as low as 200 in the 1960s, but has seen a resurgence to an estimated 6,000 big cats in the state today. The population boom has brought with it an increase in human interactions with the big cats, but no cougars have ever attacked humans in the state, according fish and wildlife officials.

-- Kale Williams

kwilliams@oregonian.com

503-294-4048