Police were on the lookout for a mountain lion today in a residential neighborhood off Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades.

Someone called police at 11:43 p.m. Wednesday and said to report a big cat weighing about 150 pounds near Temescal Canyon Boulevard and Sunset, Los Angeles police at the West L.A. Station said.

Two police officers thought they had the big cat cornered near Palisades Charter High School between 12:30 a.m. and 1 a.m., a video crew at the scene reported.

Animal control workers were requested, police Sgt. David Craig said. The locale is considered a residential area, Craig said.

As of 4 a.m., police remained assigned to the area as a precaution, police Lt. Martha Moran said.

A police officer at the scene told RMG News the mountain lion appeared to be 250 pounds. Mountain lions rarely grow that large.

Regardless of the cat’s size, the area of the sighting has been mountain lion habitat for thousands of years.

Other active wildlife in the area early today included coyotes and at least one skunk, according to RMG News.

via Mountain lion hunted in Pacific Palisades – Press-Telegram.

The National Park Service has announced that three mountain lion kittens were born in the Santa Monica Mountains and a new male lion was fitted with a tracking collar in the Santa Susana Mountains Area. The only other documented litter of mountain lion kittens was born in the summer of 2004.

The kittens were found on May 26 by researchers just south of Peter Strauss Ranch near Mulholland Highway. Kittens P17 and P19 are females, and P18 is a male (P stands for Puma, another name for mountain lion, which is also the species’ genus – Puma concolor).

Wildlife researchers intensively monitored P13, the kittens’ mother, throughout the spring after GPS tracking revealed that she and P12, a collared male mountain lion, spent several days in close proximity in late January. Adult mountain lions rarely interact with each other except to mate and during conflicts over territory.

Each of the kittens has been implanted with a tracking device that will allow researchers to follow their movement. This is the first urban mountain lion study that has had the opportunity to track mountain lion kittens from such a young age.

National Park Service researchers will study the new litter to see if the male mountain lion kitten will attempt to disperse to more expansive habitat when he matures, and if the females will have litters of their own in the future.

The litter of kittens is significant in other ways as well. P12, the unconfirmed father of the kittens, is genetically different from the other mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains. He made the only documented successful mountain lion crossing across Highway 101 in spring of 2009 to enter the mountains, and it is possible he came from another region, bringing new genetic material with him.

The kittens will face many challenges as they mature. The habitat in the Santa Monica Mountains is robust, and suitable for hunting and reproduction. However, the limited amount of open space, and lack of wildlife crossings that allow for safe passage to other wild areas to the north and west can create conflicts over territory and result in inbreeding within the confined mountain lion population.

In another important development in the mountain lion study, P16 was also added to the research study in May. P16 lives in the Santa Susana Mountains off of I-5. The study hasn’t followed any mountain lions in the Santa Susana Mountains in six years. P16′s movements will be studied to see if he stays in his current location, or attempts to cross a number of the major and minor highways to move north into national forest land, or south into the Santa Monica Mountains.

Researchers will be particularly interested in a potential crossing of the Santa Clara river valley and Highway 126, potentially less of a barrier to wildlife than freeways like 101 and 118. This connection across Highway 126 is a critical step between the Santa Monica Mountains to the south, and large, healthy mountain lion populations to the north in Los Padres National Forest.

Research in the Santa Monica Mountains reveals that the male mountain lions frequently travel the entire length and breadth of the Santa Monica Mountains from I-405 at the east end of the park, to the agricultural areas in Camarillo to the west, and from the Pacific Ocean and Malibu to the south to the 101 freeway to the north, which acts as a barrier to further travel.

From these borders created by roads or development, they often turn around and head back into the mountains, unwilling to attempt a crossing to other wildlands in the Simi Hills, Santa Susana Mountains, and ultimately in Angeles and Los Padres National Forests.

The National Park Service mountain lion study started eight years ago in July, 2002 with the initial collaring of P1. Since then, researchers have tracked 19 mountain lions. Currently, the study monitors six working GPS collars on adult mountain lions, as well as the three new kittens that are monitored by vehicle or on foot using VHF transmitters.

This is the largest number of mountain lions ever followed at one point in time during the study. The study data has also informed project proposals, currently in progress, to establish a safe and effective wildlife crossing point under Highway 101 in the wildlife corridor near Liberty Canyon road in Agoura Hills.

The study has received a variety of federal, state, grant and donation funding over the past eight years. It last received funding in 2008 and the National Park Service and its partners are actively working to secure additional funding to keep the project going past 2010.

via Good News for Mountain Lions – Topanga Messenger Newspaper.

The Santa Monica Mountains are home to some great local hiking, but we also share this territory with some of the most urban mountain lions in the country. Since 2002, researchers have been tracking and monitoring 19 mountain lions in the mountains, and over the past month they were witness to the birth of three new mountain lion kittens – the first documented births in the Santa Monica Mountains since 2004.

I know mountain lions tend to scare the bejeezus out of hikers, but attacks on humans are exceedingly rare. Here in L.A., you’re in much more danger driving to the trailhead than you are on the trail, generally speaking … and also, LOOK HOW CUTE THIS KITTEN IS:

The three kittens – two females and a male – will provide Park Service biologists an unprecedented opportunity to study the movement and range of the litter. And the kittens are also unique in that their father, a collared lion named P12, was the first recorded mountain lion to successfully cross the 101 freeway to enter the area, potentially bringing new genetic material into the isolated and slightly inbred lions in the Santa Monica Mountains.

the ranges of known lions in the Santa Monicas

The study has also located and tracked a lion known as P16, the first tracked lion in the Santa Susana Mountains since 2004.

P16 – the only tracked lion in the Santa Susana Mountains

The movement of all of the lions will be monitored to provide data for future preservation efforts, including proposed wilderness corridors to help the lions cross the area’s freeways. If you’re interested in more info, the full NPS press release can be read here(PDF). Otherwise, here are some more pictures of the kittens. Check out those claws!

All images courtesy of the National Park Service.

via New Mountain Lion Kittens in the Santa Monicas | Modern Hiker.

The Santa Monica Mountains welcomed a litter of three mountain lions, officials announced today.

According to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, the kittens were discovered on May 26 near Peter Strauss Ranch. Two are female and one is male, according to a news release.

“Each mountain lion kitten has been implanted with a tracking device that will allow researchers to follow the kittens’ movement,” according to the recreation area. “This is the first urban mountain lion study that has had the opportunity to track mountain lion kittens from such a young age. National Park Service researchers will study the new litter to see if the male mountain lion kitten will attempt to disperse to more expansive habitat when he matures, and if the females will have litters of their own in the future.”

Officials say it marks only the second time officials have documented a litter of mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains. The first was in the summer of 2004.

via Rangers welcome some very cute lion kittens at Santa Monica Mountains | L.A. NOW | Los Angeles Times.

Click through on the link to see the picture of one of the cubs. Absolutely adorable.

Three new mountain lion kittens are being tracked in the Santa Monica Mountains west of Malibu Canyon. The National Park Service found the cats — 2 females and one male — on May 26th off Mulholland Highway just south of the Peter Strauss Ranch. They were implanted with tracking devices and now are part of the first urban mountain lion study to follow kittens from such a young age. The father is believed to be the lion that crossed the Ventura Freeway a couple of years ago.

via Three new mountain lion kittens in Santa Monicas – LA Observed.

KINGMAN, Ariz. (AP) – Arizona Game and Fish Department officials say a mountain lion has been found and killed southeast of Prescott and it's believed to be the same one that attacked a man last weekend.

Officials say the mountain lion was located Friday less than a half-mile from the house where a 30-year-old man was attacked Sunday night near Walker. The man survived with minor injuries.

Game and Fish officials had been looking for the mountain lion since Monday. The one found was a 6 to 7-year-old female weighing approximately 75 pounds and they say the animal's size was consistent with tracks found at the attack site.

A full necropsy will be done and the mountain lion's head will be submitted for rabies testing to help determine if disease or other physical ailment influenced the animal's behavior.

via Mountain lion killed near Prescott attack site – KSWT: Local News, Weather, Sports Yuma, AZ El Centro Imperial Valley, CA |.

What would you do if you suddenly spotted a growling mountain lion about eight feet away in the dark?

Andy Bell said he was only about 100 feet from his Walker home when that happened to him Sunday night while he was turning off his outdoor water supply, so he decided to bolt for his front door.

Unfortunately, his running triggered the catamount's predatory attack response.

“It was on my back and took me down to the ground,” Bell told The Daily Courier Wednesday while in Prescott for doctor visits and rabies shots.

With the lion on his back, Bell said he slid about six feet down his gravel driveway and ended up directly under the back of his truck.

Luckily, he barely cleared the truck hitch but the lion's head rammed into it, peeling the lion right off his back.

“If I would have hit that hitch, he would have had a free dinner,” Bell said.

The stunned lion ran off and Bell ran into his house. He came back out with a gun but the lion was gone.

He had just experienced the most terrifying moment of his life.

“I've had close calls before in car accidents, but this is a completely different game,” Bell said. “I have a whole new respect for nature and its power.”

Bell is a hunter and he knows he shouldn't run from lions, but when he heard that lion growl he felt like his best chance was to run for the house because it was so close and he was unarmed.

“Put yourself in those shoes and see what you would have done,” Bell said.

While Bell suffered only a scratch from the lion, the six-foot slide in the gravel injured him significantly.

He has large gouges in the palms of his hands and injured his left elbow and right knee. He's getting tests to determine the extent of the injuries. On Wednesday he had to get rabies shots.

He hasn't been able to do much work at his RMS Fleet Service diesel repair shop in Prescott.

Bell said his dog has gone into barking fits about the same time almost every night since Saturday, and the dog refused to go outside with him Sunday night when the cat attacked, even though the dog always wanted to join him in the past.

Then Tuesday night, his neighbor reported seeing the lion after it set off his outdoor motion-sensor light. The neighbor lives about 150 yards away in Walker, a small forested community a few miles southeast of Prescott.

Like Bell, the neighbor got his gun and went back outside, but the cougar was gone.

“I was up all night just knowing it was out there,” Bell said.

Bell and his girlfriend are staying armed when they go outdoors, and Bell would love to get a shot at the lion. But he knows it's not an easy job to track a cougar, especially when he's limping.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services trackers plan to try a second time today to track the lion, said Zen Mocarski of the Arizona Game and Fish Department. Their dogs were unable to pick up a scent Tuesday. Wildlife officials have not been able to identify any lion tracks in the area, either.

Despite what he has been through, Bell still loves nature and worries that his experience will scare off visitors to Prescott. So he is urging people not to fear the forest because of what happened to him.

via Walker man details lion attack – The Prescott Daily Courier – Prescott, Arizona.

Something seems fishy about this story.

KINGMAN – Authorities have called off the search for a mountain lion suspected of attacking a Prescott man on Sunday night.

Arizona Game and Fish officials says partial tracks were found Monday, but tracking dogs were unable to pick up the mountain lion's scent.

The suspected attack occurred near the Snow Drift Mine area. Andy Bell says he was outside his home just after dark Sunday when he heard some rustling in the bushes. His flashlight revealed what he believed to be a mountain lion about eight feet away.

Bell says he ran for his home, but was pounced on from behind near his truck. He believes the mountain lion hit its head on the trailer hitch and fled as Bell rolled under the vehicle.

The 30-year-old Bell was treated by a doctor for a shoulder scratch that he says came from one of the lion's claws.

via Prescott man reportedly attacked by mountain lion.

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With some quick thinking, determination and the help of strangers, one with a highly appropriate name, a Running Springs woman survived an encounter with a mountain lion on a lonely Lake Arrowhead trail on May 4.

As the animal crouched to attack, Laura Cuaz used several protective strategies before finally climbing a pine tree and screaming for help.

After dropping her daughter off at the Lake Arrowhead Christian School, Cuaz, 47, had gone jogging on a U.S. Forest Service (USFS) road near the Lake Arrowhead Community Services District’s (LACSD) sewage treatment plant on Alberta Lane around 9:50 a.m. She waved at a plant employee as she passed.

It was the first time she had jogged on the path. Clad in a short skirt and a top, she carried only a water bottle and her cell phone.

On her return trip, about 20 minutes later, she said, “I heard a loud, running sound and leaves crackling. I knew what it was and turned in an offensive stance, shouting as loudly as I could.”

Cuaz, a former U.S. Air Force captain, said the cat stopped about two arms lengths away and crouched. She estimated it had waited for her behind a tree 15 feet away. She immediately began screaming for help.

The cat was not fully grown, she said, but about the size of a Rottweiler. Officers from the California Department of Fish and Game and the USFS later told her it was probably an 80-pound male seeking to establish its own territory.

‘used my water bottle’

“I used my water bottle to squirt its eyes, hoping to startle it,” she said. “I was still screaming and holding eye contact. It retreated about six inches.”

The big cat then walked to within an arm’s length from her. “I was lunging back toward it every couple of seconds when he did, still squirting it with water, but it was still engaged in the attack mode,” she said. “It appeared to be sizing me up, deciding whether to take me as an adversary or as prey.”

As she then tried to poke the cat’s eyes, it went for partial cover behind a tree branch, she said. “I broke off the branch and began hitting it, but it did not flinch,” she recalled.

When she had the chance, Cuaz-a former six-year U.S. Customs aviation enforcement officer who specialized in intercepting drugs being flown illegally into the country-dialed 9-1-1 and squirted the cat with the last of her water.

Her call didn’t go through, so she scrambled up a small pine tree, stopping near its top, about 15 feet off the ground.

Her idea, she said, was that if the cat tried to follow, the tree’s many branches would make its pursuit more difficult, and she could kick downward at it. “It would have to drag me down fighting to get to my neck,” she said.

As she continued screaming, she heard a voice responding to her. She later learned it belonged to one of two U.S. Forest Service workers, putting up a fence along a trail four ridges away.

“They said they had never heard screaming like that before,” she said. “They used a PA on their vehicle to respond.”

search begins

The pair, later identified as Jason Ardenski and Michael Mursik, notified sheriff’s deputies on a two-way radio and began searching for her on foot.

As Ardenski and Mursik, who was on his first day as a Forest Service volunteer worker, continued searching, climbing uphill through dense brush, deputies set up a search-and-rescue command post and scrambled Sheriff’s Department helicopter 40 King to aid in the search.

Fire Department rescuers and paramedics were also dispatched, along with deputies. Rick Fischer, a Fish and Game warden, was also called to the area.

“I screamed a little more and then had to stop, as I was losing my vocals and my breath,” Cuaz said. “I needed to breathe and think about my next move.”

It turned out to be shaking the tree to try to dislodge the cat’s foot, now resting on the trunk.

Just then, she said, a white truck “came barreling around the corner on the path. The driver, Justin Luck, the man with the fitting name, was the man I had waved at earlier.”

She shouted to him that she was up the tree and he backed his truck up to it. The truck frightened away the cat, but Luck was going after it.

“Justin jumped out of his truck, brandishing a pocket knife and got the rake out of the truck and was going after the lion, but it was already gone,” she said.

Cuaz said she later learned he had heard her screams after turning off the pump he’d been operating, responding immediately. Luck then took her back to the LACSD plant for a cup of coffee. “It was the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had,” she said.

some observations

In a post-incident report, Ardenski made some observations about Cuaz’s ordeal.

The helicopter had to break off its search because its fuel ran low, he said, and the mountain lion had begun breaking limbs off the tree in an attempt to reach its prey. Amazingly, he said, Cuaz never heard the helicopter, though it made several sweeps over where she was treed.

“Remember while you are out in the forest on patrol or working on a project, keep your windows and radios down and your eyes and ears open,” Ardenski reminded his colleagues. “It might just save a life.”

Though the experience seemed like 100 hours, Cuaz said, she now estimates she spent no more than five minutes facing off the cat on the ground and another five in the tree.

After the threat was over, she said, “I hung in the tree and just wept. I completely let go. I was done emotionally, I was done physically.”

Asked for her advice to others who would venture onto a forest trail, Cuaz recommended taking a dog along, as well as a “SPOT,” a portable electronic device able to transmit the holder’s GPS location to all 9-1-1 responders.

She also recommends taking bear spray, a bear horn and a whistle. “I ran last night with a baseball bat,” she said. But Cuaz said she has no immediate plans to run again in the area of her close call.

‘poster child’

Asked whether she’d been told by experts that she did the right things to fend off an attack, Cuaz said, “they called me the poster child. They said I’d done exactly the right thing.”

Cuaz added that she’d gone over in her mind many times in advance how she should respond in such a situation, so it became almost second nature.

On the morning in question, she said, “one minute I was having coffee at Jensen’s, saying hello to friends, and 30 minutes later I was in the animal kingdom food chain.”

While the incident was unfolding, she said, “I got to thinking about my husband with someone younger and more beautiful and I said, ‘it’s not to be. Not today, cat.’”

The day after the incident, she said, another preschool mother told Cuaz she had planned to go jogging on the same trail, with her daughter, 40 minutes after Cuaz encountered the mountain lion.

“It all made sense then,” she said. “I was glad it was me. God meant for me to be there. The cat would have gotten her daughter. I needed for it all to pull together, and that did it for me.”

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FREEZE
The Mancos River rises in southwestern Colorado and flows through the Ute Mountains on its way to New Mexico, where it empties into the San Juan River three miles shy of the Four Corners intersection. Over millions of years, the river and its tributaries have carved a fanlike rill of dramatic canyons out of the ancient sediments of the Mesa Verde tablelands, a maze of vertiginous stone walls. The rugged, arid landscape of juniper forest proves a rich habitat for wildlife.

At 25, Sue Yellowtail was just a few years out of college, working for the Ute Indian tribe as a water quality specialist. Her job was to travel through remote areas of the Ute reservation, collecting samples from streams, creeks, and rivers. She spent her days crisscrossing remote backcountry, territory closed to visitors and rarely traveled even by locals. It’s the kind of place where, if you got in trouble, you were on your own.

On a clear, cold morning in late December, Yellowtail pulled her pickup over to the side of a little-used dirt double-track, a few yards from a simple truss bridge that spanned a creek. As she collected her gear, she heard a high-pitched scream. Probably a coyote killing a rabbit, she thought. She clambered down two steep embankments to the water’s edge. Wading to the far side of the creek, she stooped to stretch her tape measure the width of the flow. Just then she heard a rustling and looked up. At the top of the bank, not 30 feet away, stood a mountain lion. Tawny against the brown leaves of the riverbank brush, the animal was almost perfectly camouflaged. It stared down at her, motionless.

She stood stock-still.

Yellowtail had entered the first instinctual fear-response state, the condition of freezing known as attentive immobility. Even before she was aware of danger, subconscious regions of her brain were assessing the threat. Cued to the presence of a novel stimulus, the brain deployed the orienting reflex, a cousin of the startle reflex. Within milliseconds Yellowtail’s heart rate and breathing slowed. A brain region called the superior colliculus turned her head and slewed her eyes so that the densest part of the retina, the fovea, formed a detailed image of the cat. The visual information then flowed via the thalamus to the visual cortex and the amygdala, the key brain center for evaluating threat. Her pattern-recognition system found a match in the flow of sensory information. It recognized a pair of eyes, then the outline of a feline head. In less than half a second, before her cortex even had time to complete the match and recognize what she was seeing, her emotional circuitry had already assessed the situation: It was bad. Subconsciously, her brain also determined that the threat was not immediately pressing, and so a region called the ventral column of the periaqueductal gray (PAG) triggered attentive immobility. This is generally considered the first stage of the fear response, because it tends to occur when the threat is far away or not yet aware of the subject’s presence. The goal is to keep it that way.

When a person is frozen with fear, she is motionless but far from passive. With cortisol and adrenaline coursing through her body, she is primed for physical action, alert and intensely focused. The heart rate slows and blood pressure shoots up. Muscles tense and the pupils dilate. The body may tremble and the eyes bulge. If the fear is intense, the mind might be plunged into a state called hypervigilance, in which a person scans the environment rapidly and randomly, unable to think through the available options clearly.

Freezing is a posture of an animal that, while in danger, is primarily concerned with not getting in worse danger. Its plan is to do nothing, hope to avoid being detected, and see what happens. In the natural environment, it often proves an effective strategy. Young antelope can spend the better part of the day lying crouched and motionless in tall grass, their ears tucked and heads pressed against the ground. When accidentally disturbed by a passing lion or hyena, they bolt so unexpectedly that the predator may be too startled to chase after them.

Yellowtail’s was just the kind of situation that the behavior had evolved for: eluding a nearby predator. But freezing is essentially a temporary measure, a stopgap until the danger either goes away or becomes more pressing. It is a posture that asks the question: What next?

In the morning light of Mancos Canyon, human and animal stood confronting each other. Yellowtail had never seen a mountain lion in the wild before. Even as she fought to contain her fear, she marveled at the beauty of it. Its dark eyes looked back at her. Who knew what it was thinking behind that gaze. Was it curious, or hungry?

FLIGHT
As she locked eyes with it, the mountain lion moved forward, descending the shrubby bank and heading straight toward her.

Yellowtail waded back across the three-foot-deep stream, back toward her truck. To be prudent, she thought, she had better keep the width of the icy stream between herself and the animal. As she made it to the far side, the big cat quietly slipped into the water.

A former biology major, Yellowtail had studied predator behavior. She knew that if she began climbing the steep bank up toward her truck, she would expose her back, and she guessed that the moment of vulnerability might spur the mountain lion to attack. Instead she moved quickly down the edge of the stream and crossed again, feeling her way over the slick cobbles underfoot. Looking behind her, she expected to see the animal climb the far bank and disappear. But no: It followed her path along the water’s edge and again started swimming after her.

“I’m in trouble,” Yellowtail thought. “This is serious.” There was no doubting the mountain lion’s intention now. Trapped between the stream’s steep narrow banks, she couldn’t think of any way to keep the animal away. She was holding a microcassette recorder that she kept for taking notes, and she threw it at the cat. It just kept coming.

Yellowtail retreated down the riverbank, shouting and throwing rocks and chunks of ice. Somehow she managed to keep herself from running. She crossed the stream, worked farther down the bank, and crossed again. The cat followed, relentlessly closing the distance. Even as she felt panic building, Yellowtail had enough presence of mind to understand that what she was seeing was a classic example of predator behavior. Running would only stoke the animal’s attack instinct. She had to fight the urge.

The mountain lion was close now, near enough to pounce. As she splashed once more across the stream, the need to run surged over her like a shiver. She bolted, splashing madly through the shallow water, her legs churning over the rough, slippery cobbles of the streambed.

She ran with everything she had.

Yellowtail was now in the grip of the second phase of the fear response, flight. The sudden movement of the mountain lion had broken the spell of her attentive immobility and gotten her moving, but while the animal was still a fair distance off she had managed to keep her wits and suppress her fear centers’ automatic panic reaction. But as the cat drew closer, reason and willpower wavered as the fear grew stronger. At last they gave way altogether.

This process has been witnessed in the laboratory using brain-scan technology. Subjects inside an fMRI scanner were asked to play a Pacman-like game in which they were chased by a predator. When they were “caught,” they were given a series of mild electric shocks. While not exactly a realistic scenario, the game did elicit brain activity that paralleled Yellowtail’s. When the “predator” was far away, the subjects’ brains showed activity mostly in the prefrontal cortex. As it drew nearer, the area of greatest metabolism shifted to the periaqueductal gray, the region that codes for the behavioral patterns of the four fs.

Yellowtail made it only halfway across the creek before her rubber boot caught on a large rock. She stumbled, twisting, and went down hard into the water. At that instant the mountain lion pounced. Instinctively it lunged for Yellowtail’s neck, but as she fell it misjudged and dragged its teeth across her scalp. Under the weight of the big cat, Yellowtail slipped below the surface.

FRIGHT
Looking back on the moment from years after the fact, Yellowtail can still recall every detail with perfect clarity. She remembers feeling the warmth of the animal’s mouth on her head. She remembers looking up toward the surface through her sunglasses and thinking, with a perplexing degree of calm: “When your time’s up, your time’s up.”

Yellowtail had entered a third phase of the fear response, a state known as tonic immobility, or quiescence—in lay terms, playing possum. When an animal is seized by an attacker, the caudal ventrolateral region of the PAG generates a response that from the outside looks like total collapse. In the teeth of a full-blown sympathetic response, the parasympathetic system now swings into overdrive. The body, insensitive to pain, goes completely limp, often falling to the ground as awkwardly as rag doll, limbs splayed, head thrown back. Eyes closed, it trembles, defecates, and lies still. It looks, in a word, dead.

This is the position of utter despair, a final, last-ditch Hail Mary pass of a strategy. The one hope of quiescence is that the attacker, thinking its quarry has expired, will stop attacking. In Yellowtail’s case, the mountain lion appeared to react to her quiescence. Momentarily it released its grip. That was enough. In an instant she snapped out of her dissociative dream state and was sputtering back up to the air. Without reason, without thought, she started running again, flailing so hard that she ran right out of one of her hip boots.

And then—nothing. Whatever happened next, Yellowtail has no idea, because for the next 10 or 15 seconds she was overcome by a panic so blind that she blacked out. She had entered a realm of fear strong enough to shut down the memory-forming hippocampus and perhaps even consciousness itself.

The science behind that kind of amnesia remains murky, because such intense fear is a state as yet inaccessible to science. It is known that amnesia often accompanies extremely terrifying experiences. Chances are, an overdose of cortisol or a related substance, corticosterone, disrupts the hippocampus and inhibits the formation of new memories. This could be beneficial if it prevents later traumatic recollections.

Yellowtail will never know what terror her amnesia cloaked. At any rate, it did not last long. The next thing she remembers, she was on the riverbank on the far side of the stream. She had emerged from her blind panic oddly collected and remembers that time seemed to be moving in slow motion. She found herself lying on top of the mountain lion’s shoulders, her right arm thrust down its throat. She looked down and saw that the animal’s jaws were so huge that its canines were overlapped on either side of her arm.

FIGHT
“I’ve got to kill this animal or it’s going to kill me,” she thought. She happened to be wearing her fly fishing vest, from which hung a surgical-steel hemostat on a retractable string. In the strange clarity of total fear, she reasoned through a course of action. First she tried to wrap the string around the cat’s throat to strangle it but abandoned that plan when the cat thrashed, slashing its teeth dangerously close to her fingers. Before moving on to a new strategy, she paused and carefully inspected her left hand to make sure her fingers were all there. “Because if they weren’t, I was going to pick them up and put them in my pocket,” she says today. “It’s just crazy, the stuff that you think about.”

Her next thought was to stab it in the eye with the hemostat. “It just dawned on me: ‘I’ve got to get to the brain,’ so the eye was the best bet.” Without thinking twice, she clutched the hemostat and stabbed it over and over again into the cat’s left eye. The beast screamed a horrifying yowl. She kept stabbing.

Yellowtail had worked her way through to the last of the four fs, the fight, or aggressive defense, response. Like quiescence, aggressive defense is a tactic of last resort. People in the throes of full sympathetic overdrive are capable of totally uninhibited, blind violence. They will use any weapon and inflict any injury they can. On the battlefield this impulse may be useful in the heat of fighting, but it can also lead to reckless, even mindless, behavior. And it is very difficult to shut off. Once the cortex has yielded control to the PAG, there is no getting it back until the shouting is over. The annals of military history are filled with tales of soldiers who kept slaughtering well after the battle was over.

In Yellowtail’s case, there was no need to restrain her impulse to violence. After a while, though, she sensed that the mountain lion had had enough. She kicked off her other hip boot and got ready to stand up. The cat let go of her arm. As soon as Yellowtail’s weight was off it, the cat stood up too. Yellowtail lunged at it, swearing and shouting, “Come on, you want some more?” The cat didn’t move. Yellowtail lunged again, to see if it seemed ready to attack her again. It just stood there, looking dazed. Yellowtail backed up about 20 feet, then turned and ran down the bank until she found a cattle path through the brush leading back up the embankment to the road, and then to her truck. “The whole time, I was worried that she was going to come through the brush and get me,” Yellowtail says, “but she never did.”

Yellowtail got into her truck and drove for help. Not until she was in an ambulance did her multiple cuts and bruises begin to throb with pain. Trackers returned to the site of the attack, located the mountain lion, and shot it. It turned out to be an aged female, underweight and weak from starvation. Yellow tail figures that if the cat had been a full-size male, she would be dead now. As it was, she came very close.

“It’s amazing what you can do when you’re under that kind of stress, in a life-or-death situation,” she says. “You do whatever it takes to keep yourself alive.”

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Through the doggie door! Wow, that would be such a surprise.

SALIDA, Colo. (AP) - Colorado Division of Wildlife says it has euthanized a mountain lion after it entered a Chaffee County home and killed a dog.

DOW says officers tranquilized the lion, but it appeared to be malnourished, and they decided to euthanize the animal.

The lion chased a small dog through a pet door of a home near Salida Thursday afternoon. Michelle Bese took her 5-year-old and hid in a bedroom where her 2-year-old was sleeping. Chaffee County Sheriff’s deputies arrived and helped the family escape through a bedroom window.

DOW officers arrived shortly after and tranquilized the lion. They say it was about 20 pounds underweight for its age.

The family had five dogs. One pup died and two were seriously injured.

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Normally mountain lions are so solitary that meet-ups result in one of them being killed. If this picture is authentic, it’s pretty remarkable.

Photo by Courtesy photo

A Durango Herald reader sent in this photo of five mountain lions and said it was taken recently in La Plata Canyon, “out by the mine.” It is unusual behavior for the solitary animals, said Patt Dorsey, area wildlife manager for the state Division of Wildlife.

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This is a strange story. Normally, mountain lions are solitary creatures, with ranges of miles and miles.  I almost don’t believe it. But I’m glad they aren’t embarking on a mountain lion killfest because of it.

Two brothers hiking in Pescadero Creek Park in San Mateo County had a close encounter of the threatening kind when they came face to face with two aggressive mountain lions, prompting the temporary closure of the park.

The California Department of Fish and Game reports that the men were hiking in the park late Sunday afternoon when one of them was approached by a mountain lion showing aggressive behavior. The man picked up a large stick and started swinging it at the lion while shouting. His brother, who was nearby and heard the shouting, came to his aid and then noticed a second lion approaching.

The mountain lions remained outside the range of the swinging stick, but just a few feet away. Together, the men eventually scared off both animals.

The hikers told DFG wardens that they were confronted for an estimated two to four minutes, which is highly unusual for mountain lions. Thus, the animals were deemed a threat to public safety and the park was closed.

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It’s a conspiracy, apparently. I don’t know why PA would want to cover up if they did have Mountain Lions in the state. Because Mountain Lions are awesome.

On Wednesday morning, about a year after the cougar episode erupted in Sadsbury Township, Samuel S. Fisher finished a farm chore and rode a draft horse into his yard.

He hopped down nimbly. He chatted about post-cougar life on his Amish produce farm.

It’s been rocky, he said.

The scene hasn’t changed visibly since sightings of the big cats began trickling in.

The corn has again grown tall. Woods still loom thickly beyond the pasture.

Fisher continues to maintain that he shot a marauding mountain lion with a rifle last October and then used his pocketknife to stab another big cat that jumped him from a tree.

The claims caused a clamor in the area and triggered a futile helicopter hunt for the beasts.

A state police lab test of the knife revealed human blood, but none from a cougar, said state Wildlife Conservation Officer Dennis Warfel, who investigated.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission concluded the animals were imaginary and threatened to cite Fisher with making a false report.

But that never happened.

After sitting down last winter with Amish church leaders, Warfel said, commissioners decided to drop the matter.

That saved Fisher up to $300 in fines. But it cost him a month at Rest Haven Inc., a private mental health services facility in Goshen, Ind.

Fisher said he went there to get checked out at the behest of his church community.

“I came home with a clean [slate],” Fisher said. But the interlude led to “a heck of a tough winter” and weeks of lost income for his family of nine.

It did not change his mind about what he experienced, he added.

“They’re saying it’s a hoax,” he said of the Game Commission. “I told them just like it was.”

Fisher, a stocky man in his early 40s, sells such commodities as blueberries, tomatoes, homemade cheese and eggs.

His Country View Produce farm on Windy Top Road occupies an out-of-the-way corner of the county.

But he’s far from alone in asserting that cougars roam some of the emptier spots of the Northeast.

Six Sadsbury Township area residents went on record last year saying they’d seen or heard evidence of the big cats.

Stephen L. Mohr, a former PGC commissioner, said he believes them.

“There’s no question there were cats there,” Mohr said.

Mohr is now chairman of the Conoy Township supervisors and president of Unified Sportsmen of Pennsylvania, which has repeatedly sued the Game Commission over its deer-management policy.

After the attack, Fisher said, Mohr came to his farm and helped him find what they thought were cougar prints in the dust.

Unified Sportsmen raised a small amount of money to defend Fisher, said Charles Bolgiano, the group’s legislative aide.

In addition, Mohr’s daughter notified the Game Commission by letter that she was representing Fisher.

That was in November.

The commission never responded, said Kendra Mohr, a partner in the law firm of Pannebaker & Mohr.

Meanwhile, Fisher said, on the night of Nov. 15, “my neighbor’s horse was attacked by something.”

“That hide was peeled over” as if raked by big claws, Fisher said. His own horses bolted through a fence, which he said had never happened in the 22 years he has lived there.

The neighbor’s black two-year-old colt recovered, Fisher said.

On Nov. 26, state wildlife conservation officers confirmed that a farm manager killed a serval cat that was killing chickens roughly 35 miles away in Willistown Township, Chester County.

The serval, an exotic African feline that resembles a small cheetah, had been domesticated, according to the Game Commission.

By that time, apparently, the alleged mountain lions had vanished from Lancaster County.

Unified Sportsmen received unverifiable reports that they were hunted down secretly and killed, Mohr said.

Nobody in the case is claiming the animals were wild.

“I don’t think I’d be alive if this was a wild mountain lion,” Fisher said. “My feeling is it was a [young] pet cat” that escaped or was set free.

Mohr said he believes someone released the cats “to cause a ruckus.” That person then stood back and watched the uproar unfold on the Fisher farm, according to Mohr.

But experts have long since discounted the idea there were any cougars at all.

Mountain lions are solitary animals, pointed out Kerry Gyekis, a forester and researcher with the Eastern Cougar Foundation, Harman, W.Va., which is dedicated to reestablishing cougars in the East.

“[Fisher] reported three cougars” of different colors, Gyekis recounted in an e-mail. “I doubt if that has ever happened in the history of man. Another was supposedly a black cougar … there is no history of any in the Americas … period.”

Game Commission officers found no scat, prints or other physical evidence of big cats, Warfel said.

“We feel [Fisher] believes he saw something,” Warfel added, and that many other reports also are sincere.

He encouraged people to call in unusual sights or sounds.

But he said loud, unearthly screechings can often be pinned to more prosaic creatures, such as great horned owls or raccoons.

The report of a bobcat, too, in this area could be credible, he said. “I’ve heard a bobcat in the wild and it is one gosh-awful … it sounds like a woman being attacked.”

Fisher snorts at such explanations.

“I’m talking something as long as from me to you,” he said, indicating about a 7-foot span.

“My story hasn’t changed since day one,” the farmer emphasized.

Things have thankfully quieted down. However, Fisher added, “I still dread going into the woods because you never know what’s in there.”

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The PA Game Commission is on the scene this morning looking for a possible mountain lion that attacked a farmer at 5:30 Thursday afternoon.

An Amish farmer saw two large cats in his backyard, went to get a gun and then shot one of the cats injuring it, leaving a trail of blood into the woods. When the farmer followed the cat, on of the cats attacked him cutting his shoulder and arm.

The game commission maintains that mountain lions do not live in Pennsylvania and have not for over 100 years.

Bobcats live near the Harrisburg area. But members of this Amish community, who have seen the cats mid August, say there is a distinct difference between these cats and a bobcat.

The two differences between a bobcat and a mountain lion are size and tail length. A mountain lion is double the size of a bobcat and has a much longer tail.

The game commission is combing the woods looking for the injured cat.

They said they are not sure what the animal is and hope to find the animal or a hair sample to help identify the animal.

As for the farmer attacked, he was treated at Lancaster General Hospital. He is suspected to be ok.

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A Santa Barbara County man is recovering after being attacked by a mountain lion on San Marcos Pass.

The man lost his pet cat in the attack. He and his girlfriend were walking around their home near the intersection of Painted Cave and Old San Marcos Road when he says the mountain lion attacked them.

After killing his cat, the mountain lion tripped the victim and bit him in the arm. The 6’4″ man was able to strike the mountain lion and it ran away

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DANSKIN, B.C. — A B.C. mother who fended off a cougar attacking her seven-year-old son says her boy is recovering well but doesn’t want anyone discussing the ordeal in front of him.

Mary Metzler said her son, David Metzler Jr., needed 22 stitches to close a gash on his head after the cougar pounced on him.

Metzler’s son was the second child in the province to be attacked by a cougar in less than a week.

She said her boy also has puncture wounds on his back and that his right eye was swollen shut immediately after the attack on New Year’s Eve morning in the tiny central B.C. community of Danskin.

Metzler said her son initially had trouble sleeping and still doesn’t want to hear any talk of what happened to him.

“If we want to discuss it with someone we go to another room,” Metzler said Tuesday. “He asked us, ‘Please don’t talk about it in front of me.’ It makes it hard for him all over again.”

Metzler heard her son’s terrifying screams while she was volunteering to clean her kids’ school during the winter break.

“When I opened the door and stepped out (the cougar) looked up at me and when it looked up it had Davie’s tuque in its mouth,” she said.

“I walked up to it with my scrub rag and smacked it in the face.”

Metzler initially didn’t know what kind of animal was mauling her son, who’d been sledding with his five-year-old sister.

“Now looking back, I realize what could have happened, how it could have ended, but right then I didn’t think about that. I just knew something had to done and it had to be done quickly.”

Metzler said the animal stared at her before taking off, leaving her to race to a nearby ferry terminal so she could make the 40-minute trek to a hospital in Burns Lake, B.C., with her injured son.

“It just so happened that a paramedic from our side of the lake was also on the ferry,” she said, adding she received some assurance that her boy, who was bleeding from the head, would be OK.

“You do a lot of praying,” she said of getting through the harrowing experience.

Just two days after the incident in Danskin, another boy was attacked by a cougar, outside a home in the southern B.C. community of Boston Bar.

Austin Forman, 11, was saved from a lunging cougar by the family’s golden retriever.

An R.C.M.P. officer happened to be nearby at the time and was able to shoot the animal as it battled the dog named Angel.

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Pinned face down in the snow by a cougar, seven-year-old David Metzler Jr. was already bleeding from wounds to his scalp and back when his mother came running from the church, armed with nothing but a scrub rag.

Mary Metzler, 30, who does volunteer work at the Mennonite church in the tiny community of Danskin, in central British Columbia, didn’t hesitate when faced with the chilling scene.

“I saw this animal on top of my son with his mouth at his head… I knew if I went back and took time to call for help it would be too late,” said Ms. Metzler.

She charged the mountain lion and smacked it in the head with her cleaning rag, prompting the 30-kilogram animal to drop its prey and flee.

“I just took it and hit him in the face,” she said of what has to be the most unlikely weapon ever used against a mountain lion.

It was the second of two cougar incidents in different parts of B.C. in recent days. On Saturday, an 11-year-old boy, Austin Forman, said he was saved from an attack when the family’s golden retriever grappled with a cougar outside his home in Boston Bar, in southern B.C. RCMP Constable Chad Gravelle shot and killed the cougar as it continued to fight with the dog in the Formans’ yard.

In the Danskin encounter, Ms. Metzler went to the empty church on the morning of New Year’s Eve to tidy up.

She left her youngest child, two-year-old Joseph, in a play area, while David Jr. and his sister, Doris, 5, went outside to slide their toboggan on a small hill next to the building.

Ms. Metzler had gone to a stockroom for cleaning supplies and had just picked up a rag the size of face towel when she heard piercing screams so full of terror that she knew something dreadful had happened.

“I’ve heard children scream before … but nothing like this,” she said. “I knew instantly. It was a petrified scream.”

Ms. Metzler ran across the play room, glancing out the window where she could see David Jr. being mauled.

“I didn’t recognize it as a cougar at first,” she said. “I just knew it was an animal on top of my son.”

The cougar had taken the boy to the ground less than three metres outside the church door. Ms. Metzler crossed that space in an instant and, just as she got within striking distance, the cougar raised its head.

“It looked at me, eye to eye,” she said.

Then she wound up with the cleaning rag and whacked the startled cougar so hard that it fled. She scooped up her bleeding son and ran back to the safety of the church.

“I got him in the building. Then my next thought is, where is Doris? I had lost sight of her. I got Davey … but where’s Doris?”

Running back outside – and unaware that there was a second cougar lurking nearby – she found the little girl racing toward her around the corner of the building.

“Her face was white. Her eyes were big, but she was safe.”

Piecing the attack together later, Ms. Metzler said the two children had been sliding on the hill when Doris fell, and her brother ran to help her up. Then they saw the cougar, just metres away.

Doris screamed.

“At first they froze. Then Davey made a run for the door and that’s when the cougar got him,” she said.

With the cougar holding her brother on the ground between her and the door, Doris turned and darted around the corner of the church. She kept running and, by the time she’d circled the building, her mother had vanquished the cougar.

Ms. Metzler stanched her son’s head wounds with the cleaning rag, bundled the crying children into her van, and drove 30 kilometres north to the hospital in Burns Lake, where she met her husband, David Metzler.

“It’s a mother’s instinct: ‘Don’t mess with my kids,’” Mr. Metzler said of his wife’s action. “I also believe the Lord’s hand was there.”

David Jr. had his wounds stitched up and is so well recovered he went back to school yesterday morning.

Sergeant Gary Van Spengen, a senior conservation officer, said two conservation officers from Burns Lake, Mark West and Jeff Palm, heard about the cougar attack from hospital staff. They went immediately to the scene and were soon following the tracks of two cougars near the church.

They lost the animals at dark, but the next morning, helped by cougar hunters with dogs, they found the pair, two females weighing about 36 kilograms and 30 kilograms, and shot them both.

“Cougar attacks are rare, but they do happen from time to time,” Sgt. Van Spengen said.

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The Golden Retriever was covered in blood after saving it’s 11-year-old owner from a cougar attack in Boston Bar, B.C.

A faithful White Retriever saved an 11-year-old boy from a vicious cougar attack in Boston Bar, B.C. Friday.

RCMP say that the boy, named Austin, and dog were in their family’s backyard when a cougar started advancing on the child.

Sgt. Peter Thiessen said the boy was spared from the encounter when the White Retriever jumped in the way and took the brunt of the attack.

The two animals began attacking each other, giving the boy time to run home and call 9-1-1.

A Boston Bar RCMP officer was near the area and arrived minutes later to find the dog in a brutal fight for survival against the larger predator under the home’s porch.

As the cougar bit down on the retriever’s neck, the RCMP officer advanced on the wild animal and fired two shots into the cat’s rear end.

The cougar continued its attack, so the officer walked up to the cat and fired again, this time killing the animal.

Police say the dog survived with minor injuries and the boy was completely unharmed.

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She has asked to remain anonymous, but recognition is required for any supermom who fights off a cougar that’s mauling her 5-year-old son.

Her weapon: a metal water bottle.

The attack occurred Sept. 2 on the Silver Creek portion of the hiking trail to Abercrombie Mountain, northwest of Metaline Falls.

The family, visiting from Rossland, B.C., had spread out a bit. The father and daughter were ahead followed by the mother and the son, who was lagging less than 20 yards behind her, according to Washington Fish and Wildlife Department enforcement supervisor Mike Whorton.

The cougar sprang out of the only patch of cover along that stretch of trail, investigating officers reported.

“The mother was just picking up the water bottle her husband had left on the trail for her when she saw her son go to the ground out of the corner of her eye,” Whorton said.

“She immediately ran over and began hitting the cougar with the stainless steel bottle. She was there so fast the cougar didn’t have a chance to get a death grip on the boy’s neck. The claw marks on his chest indicated the cougar was still trying to turn him into position to get a good hold.”

The mother beat the cat – estimated at 80 pounds – hard enough to make it release the boy. But the cougar retreated only a few feet and looked back.

The mother threw the water bottle.

There was no radar to record the speed or umpire to call the accuracy, but she had enough stuff on that bottle to persuade the cougar to sprint downhill and disappear into the timber.

Steeee-rike!

The boy is healing with no complications from the teeth and claw marks to his head and chest, the family told Whorton.

A hunter with hounds had no luck in tracking down the offending cougar last weekend.

Fish and Wildlife officials issued the hunter a three-day kill permit.

“That’s basically all we can do,” Whorton said. “At this point, if we found a cougar in the area we’d have no cause to believe it’s the cat that took down the child.”

The incident emphasizes a precaution wildlife experts preach to families heading into cougar or wolf country.

Kids should be kept close and between adults as much as possible. Cougars and wolves in particular are known to key in on the smallest and most vulnerable prey in a flock, and that means children.

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A 5-year-old boy from Rossland, B.C., was attacked by a cougar Wednesday while he and his family were hiking a trail in Stevens County.

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife officers said the attack occurred while the boy and his family were hiking on the Abercrombie Mountain trail along Silver Creek in the Colville National Forest.

The boy’s parents told wildlife officers that the boy was treated for head wounds at Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital in Trail, B.C. He was expected to recover completely, they said.

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BILLINGS, Mont. – Wielding his chain saw as a weapon, a Colorado man says he fought off a starving mountain lion that attacked him while he was camping with his wife and two toddlers in northwestern Wyoming.

Dustin Britton, a 32-year-old mechanic and ex-Marine from Windsor, Colo., said he was alone cutting firewood about 100 feet from his campsite in the Shoshone National Forest when he saw the lion staring at him from some bushes.

Britton revved his 18-inch chain saw and tried to back away. But the 100-pound lion followed.

As the animal pounced, the 6-foot-tall, 170-pound Britton raised his saw and met it head-on — a collision he said felt like a grown man running right into him.

“It batted me three or four times with its front paws and as quick as I hit it with that saw it just turned away,” he said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

Britton later discovered he’d inflicted a six- to eight-inch gash on the lion’s shoulder. He said he was surprised the damage wasn’t worse.

“You would think if you hit an animal with a chain saw it would dig right in. I might as well have hit it with a hockey stick,” he said.

The wounded animal retreated, leaving Britton with a only small puncture wound on his forearm.

The attack occurred Sunday evening at a campsite 27 miles west of Cody. Wildlife agents shot and killed the lion Monday after it attacked a dog brought in to track the animal.

Authorities say the lion was in poor physical condition and appeared to be starving. The lion was 4 to 5 years old.

Mountain lions are considered reclusive by nature and officials said the circumstances of the attack were highly unusual. Wyoming officials have documented only eight cases of mountain lions acting aggressively toward humans over the last decade.

After Britton’s confrontation, he and his wife, Kirsta, decided to stay the night in their pop-up camper with their two children rather than risk packing up with the lion still on the loose.

The next morning he told a passing U.S. Forest Service employee about the incident and that’s when wildlife agents were called.

Tests for rabies and other diseases came up negative, but officials said they were continuing to analyze the animal for other potential diseases.

“It’s very, very rare” for lions to attack, said Wyoming Game and Fish spokesman Warren Mischke. “We’re still trying to investigate why this lion would behave this way.”

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ELK RIVER, Idaho – A Moscow man reported being attacked by a mountain lion while he was camping near Elk River over the weekend and state wildlife authorities are searching for the cat.

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game says the man was pounced on by a mountain lion while he was gathering firewood Saturday.

The man and lion rolled down a hill while struggling and came to a stop when they hit a log. The man says he stabbed the lion in the side with a knife and the lion ran off.

The man returned home and notified authorities. Conservation officer Barry Cummings is investigating. He and the man returned to the area Sunday morning along with local hound hunters, who were unable for find the lion.

The man did not want to be identified.

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Conservation officials in B.C.’s central Interior are praising a mother who saved her young son from a cougar attack in a popular hiking area.

At approximately 4 p.m. Saturday, a mother and her two children were enjoying an afternoon hike near Pinnacles Provincial Park, just outside the city of Quesnel.

Officials say the cougar pounced suddenly on a seven-year-old boy, who was walking just ahead of his mother and little brother.

“He turned to look back at his mother and the cougar jumped on his back [and] knocked him to the ground,” said conservation officer Mike Krause.

“[The] mother, of course, immediately rushed in. The cougar saw the mother coming and immediately broke off the attack and … ran off.”

Another hiker stepped in and helped the family get away.

The little boy needed stitches for scratches to his cheek, ear and back, Krause said, adding, “Anybody that gets attacked by a cougar is lucky to come away with minor injuries.”

Rare incident

The park, approximately 120 kilometres south of Prince George, remained closed Wednesday while officials worked to track and capture the animal with snares and traps.

The attack and response happened so quickly, Krause said, the mother wasn’t able to give any details about the cougar, such as size or age.

Krause said officials don’t know why this cougar attacked, but they are praising the mother of the victim.

“She did what mothers will do and that’s protect their children … without hesitation,” Krause said.

Cougars are common in the area, he said, but attacks are rare.

“Particularly in the Quesnel area, this is the first recorded cougar attack on a human. It’s very rare.”

The family has asked that their name not be released.

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At first Stewart Loew was excited by the sight: a mountain lion on the family’s farm near Amado.

In 40 years on the Agua Linda Farm, Loew said this was first large cat he had seen when it appeared in the donkey pen about a month ago.

But soon, his animals started to turn up mauled or dead. First there were four sheep. Then, on June 15, an awful sight: 16 pygmy and nubian goats — all the mammals in the farm’s petting zoo — were killed. Only the geese were spared.

Loew and his wife, Laurel, who run the all-natural, community-supported farm, faced a tough choice: Try to kill the wild cat or put their animals and possibly their farm’s visitors — including many children — at some risk.

“We were really conflicted,” Stewart Loew said.

But when they thought about it, there was no choice. They had a garlic and onion festival coming up the next weekend at the farm, and people would be walking in the dark through areas where the mountain lion was making regular kills.

They called a family acquaintance who is a mountain lion hunter and got a “depredation permit” from Arizona Game and Fish — a permit to kill an animal that has been eating people’s livestock.

When the hunter went out with his dogs, they didn’t see it, but then Loew spotted the lion out of the corner of his eye. It was lounging in the farm’s yard.

“We disturbed him and he slowly walked away from us,” Stewart Loew said.

That’s when the hunter friend took advantage of the opportunity to tree and kill the lion, an older male.

It’s not so uncommon a phenomenon in Arizona. In 2008, 42 mountain lions were killed as a result of their eating — or “depredating” — livestock. That’s in addition to 264 that were legally killed by hunters.

Since 1972, an average of 31 mountain lions per year have been killed as a result of depredation, according to Game and Fish statistics. The peak year was 2003, when 66 were killed.

A mountain lion expert who for years tracked the animals in Southern Arizona said it sounds like the mountain lion at Agua Linda Farm, about 30 miles south of Tucson, had grown used to humans — “habituated” is the term experts use.

“What we found from monitoring mountain lions is they pretty much stay away from people,” said Paul Krausman, who left the University of Arizona in 2007 for a position at the University of Montana.

It’s even relatively unusual for a mountain lion to come into a farm, despite the fact that they’re in rural areas, Krausman said.

“This lion obviously went in there and had lunch, but that’s not the norm. From a management standpoint, that lion should be dealt with,” he said.

For mountain lions, growing habituated to people generally means death. That’s because they can’t easily be relocated. Males placed in another male’s territory will come into violent conflict, Krausman said. And pretty much all of Arizona is mountain lion territory.

“I wish that he was just moving through, but he had just settled in here,” Stewart Loew said.

Also, an animal that grows used to people will likely return to where people live, Krausman said. He cautioned that mountain lions occasionally kill people, especially children.

Krausman and a local mountain lion expert, Sergio Avila of the environmental advocacy group Sky Island Alliance, said several factors can cause mountain lions to start encroaching on human lands.

Among them: A younger mountain lion could have chased the older cat out of its home territory. That’s the theory an Arizona Game and Fish warden endorsed when looking into the case, Loew said.

Or the mountain lion could have been injured and found easy access to food and water at the farm, which is near the Santa Cruz River. Or long-term drought may have slowly made the cat’s territory unhabitable.

Many human factors could have contributed to the lion’s settling in at the farm, too. Urbanization, even in semi-rural areas like the river valley of Santa Cruz County, drives some animals out of their habitat. It may also lead to the animals more easily growing used to humans.

People may also be affecting the mountain lions’ prey by over-hunting deer in a given area, or by draining water sources.

The slaughter at the petting zoo was unusual behavior, but it does occasionally happen, Krausman and Avila said. It’s called “surplus kill,” and there are a variety of explanations for it, though it’s unclear which one fits this situation.

Sometimes a mother will teach her young how to kill this way, said Avila, who wrote a master’s thesis on mountain lion depredation of livestock in Baja California. Or juvenile mountain lions will kill for sport, he said.

There’s also a theory, Krausman said, that a mountain lion will go into a kill with abundant energy, and if the kill is too easy, it will keep killing until its energy is used up.

Whatever the cause, the petting-zoo slaughter shook up the Loews, who have a 12-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl.

“My poor kids. These are their pets that they’ve raised, and they had to help bury them,” Laurel Loew said.

They didn’t want to kill the mountain lion, and now they’re worried about restocking the little petting zoo before October, when kids arrive for pumpkin picking. They’re also worried about a backlash from their environmentally conscious customers.

“For us, this story has no winners,” Stewart Loew said.

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Mom pulls three-year-old daughter from cougar’s grasp in Squamish

BY REBECCA TEBRAKE AND DARAH HANSEN, VANCOUVER SUNJUNE 17, 2009 9:08 PM

METRO VANCOUVER — When Maureen Lee took her three-year-old daughter Maya salmonberry-picking along the Squamish River, she thought it would be a peaceful break from a day of packing for her family’s move to Mexico this weekend.

They were on a trail in Fisherman’s Park — about five minutes from their home in Squamish’s Brackendale neighbourhood — when Lee noticed movement in the bushes.

She thought it was a dog, but quickly realized it was a cougar.

The cat jumped onto Maya, pinned her in a fetal position and gripped her head with its claws, Lee said Wednesday, recounting the Tuesday evening attack.

“I just knew I had to get between them.”

Lee somehow wedged her slight frame between her daughter and the 80-pound male cougar, pushing him off Maya as she stood up. She grabbed Maya and ran.

“It was pure adrenalin and instinct,” Lee said. “I don’t think it was until I started running that the fear kicked in.”

As they ran, Maya, bleeding from her head and arm, kept repeating, “A bear got me. A bear got me.”

Lee didn’t turn back until she reached the safety of her neighbour’s house, who helped her stop Maya’s bleeding.

“Amazing,” Maya’s father, Pablo Espinosa, said of his wife’s actions. “I don’t know what I would have done.”

An ambulance took Maya to Squamish General Hospital where cuts on the right side of her head and her upper left arm were stitched up.

She appeared in good spirits Wednesday, even asking her mom to take her back down to the site of the attack.

“She’s very brave, but I can tell she was a bit shaken,” Lee said of Maya’s reaction to the visit. “I don’t want her to be afraid of the forest. I don’t want her to be afraid of picking berries. I want her to understand that this was a unique situation.”

The cougar drama will not change the family’s plans to relocate to Mexico on the weekend, she said.

Around 10 p.m. Tuesday, five conservation officers aided by five dogs found and killed the 18-month-old adult male cat that is suspected in the attack.

Squamish conservation officer Chris Doyle said from the animal’s outward appearance it appeared to be in good condition. However, a full necropsy has been ordered to help determine why the animal acted as it did.

Conservation officers continued to scout the neighbourhood with dog teams on Wednesday.

B.C. is home to about 4,000 to 6,000 cougars, but sightings of the elusive wild cat are “really, really unusual,” said Kyle Knopff, a PhD student at the University of Alberta who studies cougar behaviour. “In general they avoid people,” he said.

But Squamish has recently recorded an alarming spike in the number of encounters. In the past week and a half, Doyle said, 30 cougar sightings have been reported in the district, up from an average of two sightings over such a period.

Two dogs were attacked in separate incidents along the popular Chief Trail earlier this month. One of the dogs was killed when the cougar dragged it from its leash and carried it up a tree. The second dog was rescued by its owner.

In that case, conservation officers shot and killed a young female cougar, also about a year to 18 months old.

According to Doyle, that animal was in very poor health.

“It appeared she hadn’t fed for a while,” he said.

It’s not unusual for conservation officers to kill a cougar if the animal’s behaviour is deemed significantly abnormal or if the encounters reach a “high level of conflict,” Doyle said.

“If they are not in conflict, they are fairly secretive,” he added.

The high number of sightings has raised concern among Squamish residents, who’ve been told to stay alert on wooded trails and paths, and use particular caution when out with young children and pets.

Lee said she had heard about the cougar attacks on dogs and her mom had called her Tuesday morning to warn her — a warning that came back to haunt her as she ran to safety cradling Maya in her arms.

“As I was running, I thought of that. My mom’s going to kill me,” Lee said.

Neighbour Kelsey Wright said residents were walking around carrying cans and sticks to make noise with after the attack Tuesday night.

“It definitely makes you feel a little uneasy, but you can’t live your life in fear because of a cougar attack,” Wright said.

Kris Mazzotti, who lives a few doors down from Lee and Espinosa, taught her four-year-old son Joel what a cougar is and how to act if he sees one.

Mazzotti told Joel to be calm and not to run away, but she admits she would probably pick up her kids and run.

Some residents blame Olympics-related residential development in the area for the recent cougar problems.

“What is happening here was so predictable,” said Brian Vincent, a Squamish resident and communications director for an Oregon-based wildlife advocacy group, Big Wildlife.

“This was a sleepy little town for the longest time and didn’t have this problem. But because of the Olympics and all the construction for the Sea to Sky Highway and the rampant and uncontrolled housing development into wildlife habitat, these animals have become stressed,” he said.

Vincent urged local authorities and residents to avoid whipping up hysteria about the big cats.

However, Doyle said there are a number of reasons for the increase in cougar sightings, none of which have to do with development.

He said the cougars may be reacting to variations in the location and abundance of prey species, or it might be simple population dynamics.

The sightings and attacks may also be the result of young cougars leaving their mothers, he said.

He noted the recent sightings have all occurred in established residential or recreational areas, not in newly developed areas.

Knopff speculated that the two cougars that were killed were possibly siblings who came into the town limits in search of easy food. Young cougars, he said, “are definitely less effective predators. There is a learning curve, for sure.”

Knopff said spotting a cougar in its natural habitat is not cause for alarm, even if the animal is seen repeatedly.

However, a cougar that repeatedly approaches people in a threatening way, attacks pets while people are present, or attacks people is “certainly a problem.” “Such cougars must be dealt with,” he said.

According to Knopff, if you are attacked by a cougar, the best way to deter the animal is to aggressively fight back.

Link

Girl attacked by cougar in Brackendale, B.C.

Source: CBC News

Posted: 06/16/09 10:40PM

Filed Under: Canada

A three-year-old girl was attacked by a cougar in Brackendale, a community in the northern part of Squamish, B.C., early Tuesday evening.

Squamish is 60 kilometres north of Vancouver.

A helicopter evacuation to a Vancouver hospital was initiated, but later it was decided her injuries could be treated at the local hospital in Squamish.

RCMP Cpl. Dave Ritchie said the girl, who was attacked in Fisherman’s Park at 7 p.m. PT., is expected to recover.

The attack comes after conservation officers in the Squamish area warned hikers to keep an eye out for the large cats.

There were six attacks last Friday alone, including two on dogs. One dog was killed by a cougar, which was later destroyed by conservation officers.

Link

This is just fascinating to me, since I live within the range on the map – and frequently hike in this area. To think there are only 7 mountain lions in this whole vast area… no wonder I’ve never seen one.

Map: Where the Mountain Lions Live in the Santa Monica Mountains

View a high resolution version of this map here | Courtesy of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, National Park Service

Since 2002, the National Park Service has been tracking Mountain Lions in the Santa Monica Mountains, studying their movements, pinpointing their ranges and observing how human development impacts their population. Twelve have been tracked in that time with some remarkable finds.

In March, one tagged and collared in the Simi Hills last December made his way across the 101 freeway in the Liberty Canyon area, causing excitement through the Park Service. This was big news for Wildlife Ecologist Seth Riley, who is in charge of tracking them because it was the first time since the program began that one had crossed the 101 Freeway. Unlike the 118 Freeway between the Simi Hills and Santa Susana Mountains, where they can cross with ease via a tunnel for hikers, the 101 provides no such linkage.

“This is an area we’ve been concerned about for a long time,” explained Riley of LIberty Canyon. “It is the last place along the 101 where there’s natural habibat on both sides of the freeway, the last place with effective wildlife activity.”

Basically, if strip malls and housing tracts were to come to the area, it could be devastating to the ecosystem. Broadscale connectivity is important for species and habitat, especially in light of climate change, which can prompt ranges for animals and plants to shift. If they can’t shift, there’s a potential for extinction at the local level and sometimes across the board as with the threat to Joshua Trees.

Even with the development now, the Santa Monica Mountains, Simi Hills and Santa Susana Mountains are not big enough for the estimated seven lions–some tracked by collars, some not–living among them. Depending on their sex, ranges should be 150 to 400 square kilometers, mostly independent of each other, but in the Santa Monicas it is not surprising to see them overlapping, which has its own effects including fights to the death over territories and a potentially lower food supply.

The technology used to track the lions is improving fast. Today, the collars send GPS signals to a satellite that are downloaded at park headquarters in Thousand Oaks. They get a handful of locations every 24 hours, one during the day and one every two hours at night, when they are most active. But the more pings they get, the faster the batteries die.

“Getting animals and changing collars is not a simple task,” said Ray Sauvajot, Chief of Planning, Science and Resource Management for the Recreation Area. If a collar change is needed, rangers try to use a back up VHF signal on the collar and traps set in remote locations are checked daily.

The tracking of each cat tells a different story, although their lives are all intertwined. Here’s a break down of each:

P1: For all purposes, he’s the king of the mountain and happened to be the first tagged Mountain Lion in the mountains. He mated with P2, who gave birth to four cubs (P5, 6, 7 and back in 2004. He was thought to be dead back in March of this year after a bloody fight with an non-collared lion, but scientists a couple weeks later matched fresh scat to him through DNA, proving he survived the fight. They say he is likely to be still living.

P2: Although she gave birth to P1′s four children, he killed her in August of 2005. Biologist Jeff Sikich actually aurally witnessed this, unsure if it was fighting or mating. He knew one thing was for sure at the moment, the cubs were present for it and he even saw one run away as it crossed the road where his truck was parked. “That’s pretty unusual actually,” explained Riley. “Mountain lions kill each other pretty regularly and occasionally males kill females, but no one has ever heard of males killing females that they had previosly mated with.” Riley guesses that she may have been defending the children as it is commonplace for a father and son to fight over their territory. The fight lasted around 45 minutes.

P3: He lived north of the 101 freeway roaming the Simi Hills and crossing the 118 freeway to the Santa Susana Mountains. But anticoagulants got the best of him. It is not known exactly under what conditions the compounds built up in the system, but Riley has his theories. While mountains lions’ main food source are anticoagulant-free deer, rodents and coyotes are known to carry the compounds in their systems. Rodents get it directly through poisons and coyotes eat those rodents, building up a storage of the chemicals in their liver over time. Now, if a mountain lion comes by and eats the coyote, taking in the liver full of anticoagulants, that high one-time dose could be fatal. Both the coyotes and lions seem to live with smaller doses building up in their liver. 85% of coyotes and all but one of the mountain lions studied after death in the Santa Monica Mountains have evidence of the chemicals in their system, but only two have died because of it, including P3.

P4: Like P3, she lived in the Simi Hills and Santa Susana Mountains and died of anticoagulants. The National Park Service is collaborating across the state with other agencies on this issue because there is very little research about the affect of these chemicals on the animals, but they are finding that exposure is extremely widespread.

P5: One of four children of P1 and P2, he grew up, staying with his mother until her death. On his own, he claimed a territory on the west end of the mountains, some of it slightly outside of his father’s area. Unfortunately, in September of 2006, he saw his territorial father again with fatal results.

P6: She also lives in the west end of the mountains within her brother’s territory. Like the rest of her siblings, tracking collars were put on when they were young, but her collar died prematurely. It was until last April that a remote wildlife motion sensor camera snapped a shot of her alive and well (photo above).

P7: Like her brother, P5, she was also killed by the father, P1, in June of 2006. It is believed it may have been over food and was actually witnessed by a rock climber in Malibu Creek State Park.

P8: The last of the siblings, this male claimed his territory on the east of the mountains before the 405 freeway. In September of 2006, he was also killed at the claws of a mountain lion, but not P1, his father, but one that was not being tracked. Then photos of this untracked lion popped up on the wildlife cameras and he was eventually captured and named P9 in May of 2007. DNA evidence proved he killed P8.

P9: the collar malfunctioned quickly, only 6 weeks worth of data. malfunctioned in an interesting way, collected data every minute, but that data is really interesting, really detailed movement data, where he’s using trails, crossing roads. turns out he killed a young 5 or 6 month old (P-B) in malibu creek in winter of 07 before capture. lost signal, got hit in late summer 2007 on malibu canyon road during rush hour and died. P-A was also hit on malibu canyon road, not far from where P9 was killed. other lions have cross a ton of times. P-C killed on 118 in rocky peak area last october. P-D killed on the 5 at calgrove, P-E killed on 405 on may 26th, driving southbound to UCLA, saw this thing on the road, looked like it was run over a few times.

P10: Caught in February of 2008, this guy has taken full range of the mountains and is still alive. It is likely he’s a sibling of P11, but it is unknown who their mother is, meaning another female lion lived or is living in the mountains untracked.

P11: Also caught in a trap in February of 2008, the collar signal died prematurely and his status is currently unknown. Genetic similarities between P11 and P10 indicate they may be siblings, but it’s not as easy with these mountain lions. “The genetic similarity of all of our lions makes these things harder to determine than they might otherwise be,” Riley said pointing to, once again, P1, as the potential father with an unknown mother.

P12: Just caught last December in the Simi Hills, he was the one who had Riley and others excited when he crossed the 101 freeway last March. Currently, he remains in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Still counting? By all counts, it appears there could be up to seven mountain lions living in the mountains. P1, 6, 10 and 12 are being tracked or leaving evidence and P11 is suspected to be out there. And then there are at least two without collars found on cameras.

What about the non-collared? As recently as just a couple weeks ago, a dead mountain lion was found off the 405 freeway’s southbound lanes. And a few weeks prior to that, another was killed on the 5 freeway in the Newhall Pass. They were named P-D and P-E, respectively. In the past years, two other untracked lions were killed on Malibu Canyon Road.

The future? The National Park Service will continue to track and study the mountain lions. As for humans, there have been no significant interactions. “In my 18 years as a National Park Ranger in the Santa Monica Mountains, I have yet to see one in the wild,” wrote Woody Smeck, the Superintendent of National Recreation Area, in a comment on LAist.

Mountain lions tend to stay away from humans, but there is fear that the continuing human development into and around the mountains in Los Angeles and Ventura counties will leave lions with less livable space and less deer–their main source of food–which means more mountain lion interactions with humans and the eventual demise of them in the area. Kari Kiser, Sr. Program Coordinator with the National Parks Conservation Association, couldn’t agree more. “Because of the amount of land needed to survive, we need to protect that and provide connectivity.”

P6 | Courtesy of the National Park Service

A young lion found dead on the 5 Freeway | Photo courtesy of the Mountains Recreation & Conservation Authority

Link

Mountain Lion Attacks Dog, Owner Kills Big Cat

A Boulder man who shot and killed a mountain lion that bit his dog won’t face charges. 

State wildlife officials say they won’t take action because the man felt threatened. His name hasn’t been released. 

The man shot the mountain lion Sunday. Colorado Division of Wildlife spokeswoman Jennifer Churchill says the cat had apparently gone to retrieve a deer carcass it had stashed on the man’s property in north Boulder when it attacked the dog. 

The dog survived. 

The mountain lion had tags in both ears and a radio collar. Churchill says it’s unclear whether the cat was collared because of previous run-ins with people or if it had been trapped and collared as part of an ongoing study in the Boulder area. 

Link

I’ll be honest: this story seems fishy and could just as easily be made up. But, in a scene straight out of Beverly Hills Chihuahua, here you go:

Small Dogs Chase Off Cougar

 

POSTED: 9:11 am PDT May 29, 2009

UPDATED: 10:18 am PDT May 29, 2009

PHILOMATH, Ore. – A cougar picked the wrong dogs for a fight in Philomath on Monday.

 

Two dogs chased off the big cat after it strayed into the yard of a home in the small western Oregon town near the Oregon State University campus. 

The dogs’ owner, Loren Wingert, said the cougar had pinned down her border terrier, Rosie, who squealed. Wingert’s other dog, a Chihuahua named Chiquita, then began to bark ferociously. 

The barking scared the cougar away and the dogs avoided injury in the attack.

Link

The owner’s are negligent here. These aren’t pet cats.

Girl Bitten By Mountain Lion At Columbiana County Home

Posted: 9:37 pm EDT May 26, 2009Updated: 9:51 pm EDT May 26, 2009

COLUMBIANA COUNTY, Ohio – A 10-year-old girl is listed in good condition at Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh after being bitten by a mountain lion in Columbiana County. 

It didn’t happen at any zoo, or out in the wild — but at a local home where, as a hobby, a family keeps several full-sized lions and mountain lions caged up in their yard. 

Homeowner Chris Joseph said the victim is a family friend who was visiting at the time of the incident. 

Joseph said her husband was in the cages feeding the lions when the girl wandered over, asking to pet a mountain lion. 

Joseph said her husband told the girl no, but when he turned his back, she went in. 

The girl was rushed to East Liverpool City Hospital then airlifted to children’s hospital. 

The animal’s owners claim they’d been approved by the government to house these animals and that they have all the required shots. 

Joseph told NEWS9 her husband would give an interview because they wanted to set the record straight, but when news reporters showed up at the home at the time she asked them to, she wouldn’t answer the door or the phone and ended up calling police.

Link

Cougar attacks pregnant pit bull on Vancouver Island

 

 

CANWEST NEWS SERVICEMAY 21, 2009COMMENTS (5)

 

 

PORT ALBERNI, B.C. — A Vancouver Island resident drove off a cougar that attacked his dog on a trail near his home on Wednesday night.

Lance Glover was walking his pit bull, Sasha, when he encountered the animal lying in wait.

“I was talking on the phone, and I looked down and saw the cougar sitting beside the trail,” Glover said. “It jumped out and grabbed her, so I kicked at it and yelled at it, and it backed off. It came back twice. It wasn’t scared.”

During the exchange, the big cat grabbed a hold of Sasha’s rear, but Glover was able to kick it away. The American pit bull is pregnant, just a few weeks from giving birth. Glover believes the cougar is either very hungry or has simply become too habituated to people.

“I’m six-four and my dog weighs 70 pounds,” he said. “It didn’t even run away — it just walked. It’s definitely not scared of people.”

At the top of the trail, RCMP constables Jay Patovierta and Dawson McWade waited, shotguns at the ready, for a conservation officer to arrive.

It is believed to be the same cougar that menaced the same neighbourhood last month. Since that time, area residents have lost a number of cats, likely to the cougar. At that time, conservation officer Mike Newton advised that the big cat would be declared dangerous if it attacked a dog on a leash.

Link

Family Finds Mtn Lion in
Backyard

Updated: Friday, 22 May 2009, 7:59 AM PDT
Published : Friday, 22 May 2009, 6:12 AM PDT

• Posted by: Dennis Lovelace

Los Angeles (myFOXla.com) – A family in San Bernardino gets a big scare when a mountain lion is found lurking in their back yard. While working in the back yard they found a mountain lion trapped in a tree. Rick Lozano has the video report.

Department of Fish and Game responded within 30 minutes and they found the mountain lion in a far corner of the yard. Officers tranquilized the cat and took it back up into the mountains.

Link

Great site with very useful information about wild animals in California. Here’s an excerpt about Mountain Lions.

You may be attracting mountain lions to your property without knowing it!

More than half of California is mountain lion habitat. Mountain lions generally exist wherever deer are found. They are solitary and elusive, and their nature is to avoid humans.

Mountain lions prefer deer but, if allowed, they also eat pets and livestock. In extremely rare cases, even people have fallen prey to mountain lions.

Mountain lions that threaten people are immediately killed. Those that prey on pets or livestock can be killed by a property owner after the required depredation permit is secured. Moving problem mountain lions is not an option. It causes deadly conflicts with other mountain lions already there. Or the relocated mountain lion returns.

Help prevent deadly conflicts with these beautiful wild animals.

Living in Mountain Lion Country

• Don’t feed deer; it is illegal in California and it will attract mountain lions.
• Deer-proof your landscaping by avoiding plants that deer like to eat. For tips, request A Gardener’s Guide to Preventing Deer Damage from DFG offices.
• Trim brush to reduce hiding places for mountain lions.
• Don’t leave small children or pets outside unattended.
• Install motion-sensitive lighting around the house.
• Provide sturdy, covered shelters for sheep, goats, and other vulnerable animals.
• Don’t allow pets outside when mountain lions are most active—dawn, dusk, and at night.
• Bring pet food inside to avoid attracting raccoons, opossums and other potential mountain lion prey.

Identifying Mountain Lion Tracks The mountain lion track on the left can be distinguished from the dog track on the right by the absence of toenail prints and by the “M” shaped pad

Staying Safe in Mountain Lion Country

Mountain lions are quiet, solitary and elusive, and typically avoid people.

Mountain lion attacks on humans are extremely rare. However, conflicts are increasing as California’s human population expands into mountain lion habitat.

• Do not hike, bike, or jog alone.
• Avoid hiking or jogging when mountain lions are most active—dawn, dusk, and at night.
• Keep a close watch on small children.
• Do not approach a mountain lion.
• If you encounter a mountain lion, do not run; instead, face the animal, make noise and try to look bigger by waving your arms; throw rocks or other objects. Pick up small children.
• If attacked, fight back.
• If a mountain lion attacks a person, 
  immediately call 911.

click to enlarge 
 Mountain lions can be found wherever deer, their primary prey, are found. They are a Specially Protected Mammal in California and cannot be hunted.

Link

The official position is that they are escaped pets.

Big Cats Caught On Camera In Arkansas

Wildlife Officers Respond to Mountain Lion Sightings

POSTED: 9:15 am CDT May 14, 2009
UPDATED: 10:09 am CDT May 14, 2009

ROGERS, Ark. – Carlos Sinclair set up a game camera in a field near a pond to catch snapshots of deer roaming his property, but instead he caught a picture of a creature that’s rarely seen in Arkansas.

 

State wildlife officers say wild mountain lions, cougars or panthers don’t exist in the natural state. “It is our state position that the mountain lions that are here are most likely released or escaped cats,” said Game and Fish officer Myron Means. 

At one time wild mountain lions did roam freely in Arkansas, but the population was wiped out by the early 1920s when Arkansas was settled. “There has been no evidence of the Florida Panther in Arkansas since the 1920s and no evidence of a wild mountain lion in Arkansas since 1975,” said Means. 

But on average the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission receives 100 reports of mountain lion sightings each year. 

Sinclair lives in rural Madison County near Wesley. He said that in December of 2008 he saw a mountain lion sitting on a pond bank. “It was a pretty good sized cat,” said Sinclair. He checked his game camera and found that he had captured two pictures of the big cat. 

40/29 News has received reports of other mountain lion sightings, but none with pictures to back up the claims. 

The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission has said that wildlife biologist must have specific evidence to verify a mountain lion sighting, such as track marks. If a picture is taken of a big cat, officers want to go to the scene and investigate the relationship of the camera to the background. 

The most recent verified mountain lion sighting was when a cougar that was caught on a game camera in the Winona Wildlife Management area near Hot Springs. The picture clearly shows a mountain lion. Another verified mountain lion sighting was in 2003 in Carlisle near Little Rock. A mountain lion was struck by a car and wildlife officials were able to analyze the feline. The cat was declawed and also had a scar on its ear where a tag once looped through its ear. 

“We do recognize they are out there, but we do not recognize there is a viable reproducing population of wild mountain lions,” said Means. Wildlife officers believe if a resident spots a mountain lion, it’s most likely a cat that’s been released from captivity. 

According to a 2002 study by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, 150 cougars were living in the natural state as pets. Officials have no idea how many of those cats may have escaped into the wild. 

As for the big cat caught on camera in Madison County, Means said he believes it is probably a former pet. “It looks like a mountain lion, without a doubt. But, as a wildlife biologist, I don’t have the evidence to validate that sighting and I certainly don’t have the evidence to validate it’s a wild mountain lion.” 

Means said the closest wild mountain lion populations are in Florida and Southern Texas. He says it’s unlikely that a member of those cat communities would travel as far north as Arkansas. However, Means also said a confirmed wild mountain lion was recently killed in Bossier City, La., not too far from the Arkansas state line.

Link

B.C. man fends off cougar attack near ski resort

 

By TORBEN ROLFSEN 05-13-2009 COMMENTS(0) LIVE@FIVE

 

Filed under: cougar attack

A 21-year-old man hitchhiking near the Kamloops-area Sun Peaks ski resort was jumped from behind while attempting to run away from a hungry cougar.

He escaped by beating the animal’s head with rocks before being taken to Royal Inland Hospital and then released after reportedly experiencing nothing worse than some minor neck pain.

Bad timing for the resort coming right after the end of ski season; not exactly the kind of off-season activities your marketing department wants to work with.

New slogan? “At least there’s no Swine Flu!”

Link

Cougar refuses to run, killed by officers

 

By K.C. Mehaffey
World staff writer 
Posted May 13, 2009

BRIDGEPORT — State Department of Fish and Wildlife officers shot and killed an adult male cougar on the outskirts of Bridgeport on Tuesday afternoon.

It was crouching in what authorities called an attack position, about 20 feet from the officers.

“I felt absolutely horrible about the outcome, because it wasn’t what we wanted to do,” Fish and Wildlife Sgt. Jim Brown said this morning.

A resident in the 200 block of Fourth Street called Douglas County Sheriff’s deputies at about 4:15 p.m. to report a cougar in a tree outside his father’s home, said Undersheriff Don Culp. Deputies responded, along with Fish and Wildlife officers, to find the big cat in a tall poplar tree.

Brown said they were planning to tranquilize the mountain lion and relocate it. But because it was in a poplar tree, there was no way for officers to climb up and retrieve the tranquilized animal, since there were no low branches. If it fell, it may have been seriously injured on fence posts below the tree, he said.

Brown said officers instead used firecracker shot and then bird shot to scare him from the tree, but instead of running away, he fled to a nearby bush.

When Brown located him, he was crouched and ready to pounce, so Brown shot and killed him, he said.

“I know that posture from my experience and training. I had to make a decision right then, and that was the decision I made,” he said.

A crowd of people had gathered, and although they were not close to the cougar, officers would not have been able to shoot him if he ran toward them.

“I don’t know why it did what it did,” Brown added. “We had brought the transport trailer and had everything there to relocate it, but we just couldn’t practically do that.”

Link

Did Hoagie start the fight with mountain lion?

The dog’s owner says it defended him from a cougar’s attack and got mauled for his heroism. But wildlife specialists say evidence suggests Hoagie might have attacked the lion first.

By David Kelly 
10:00 PM PDT, May 6, 2009

Is Hoagie a hero or a hapless mutt who happened to pick on the wrong cat?

That depends on who’s telling the story.

William Morse said the black shepherd mix he rescued from the pound saved his life Tuesday by intercepting a charging mountain lion in the Cleveland National Forest — and got badly mauled.

“I went toward the bathroom and a mountain lion came out and attacked us,” he told reporters on the day of the incident. “It got to my dog first and chewed him up. He’s a hero, man, I love him to death. Man’s best friend prevailed.”

But state wildlife officials threw cold water on that account Wednesday, saying further investigation indicates that the inspiring story of canine derring-do may have been overblown.

Two game wardens searched the Bluejay Campground in the Santa Ana Mountains in Orange County and interviewed Morse. Based on the evidence, they say, Hoagie attacked the mountain lion, not vice versa.

“The report we got was that the dog went up to a mountain lion and the mountain lion ran away and the dog chased it and was mauled,” said Harry Morse, spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Game.

“We went out there and didn’t find any evidence of a mountain lion. They didn’t find any tracks or hair,” he said. “That’s not to say it wasn’t there.”

Wildlife officials normally hand down death sentences for dangerous mountain lions, but this one was acquitted for lack of evidence.

“If a mountain lion attacks a human being or attempts to attack a human being, we treat that as a public safety incident and we have to destroy the animal,” said Kevin Brennan, a Fish and Game wildlife biologist. “That’s not what happened here. We are not actively searching for the mountain lion in question.”

And because Morse was with his wife at the time of the incident and lions usually attack solitary individuals, Brennan doesn’t think that the dog’s owner was ever in danger.

Morse, of Wildomar, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

The Cleveland National Forest closed the Blue Jay and Falcon campgrounds until Friday to put up signs warning people to watch out for cougars.

Despite his injuries, officials believe that Hoagie actually may have gotten off lightly.

Clashes between mountain lions and dogs often end much worse. The cougar might well have had a Hoagie for lunch.

In this case, none of the mountain lion’s behavior struck experts as out of character or dangerous.

“The dog chased it and was mauled,” said Fish and Game’s Morse. “This was just a lion being a lion.”

Link

Evidence at the scene would very easily prove one version of events or another true, so I believe the Fish and Wildlife’s findings. I have to think the footprints and signs of scuffle bear out the theory that the mountain lion ran and the dog chased. 

State officials say Hoagie the dog likely provoked the mountain lion

1:33 PM | May 6, 2009

State wildlife officials said today that a dog involved in a battle with a mountain lion in the Cleveland National Forest was likely the aggressor and there was no evidence that the cougar had targeted the canine’s owners.

“The report we got was that the dog went up to a mountain lion and the mountain lion ran away and the dog chased it and was mauled,” said Harry Morse, spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Game. “We went out there and didn’t find any evidence of a mountain lion. They didn’t find any tracks or hair. That’s not to say it wasn’t there.”

Morse said the mountain lion is not being viewed as a threat to public safety and is not being sought by wardens. In cases where an animal is deemed a threat, it is hunted down and killed.

The information is at odds with previous reports that Hoagie, a black shepherd mix, had intercepted a charging mountain lion in a bid to protect its owner.

William Morse of Wildomar told authorities that he was walking with his wife and dog near the Blue Jay campground Tuesday when the mountain lion came toward him. He said Hoagie and the mountain lion battled briefly, leaving the dog badly wounded.

The canine underwent surgery at the Clinton Keith Veterinary Hospital in Wildomar and was released to its owner.

“As far as we can tell, the dog went after the lion, and the lion turned around and attacked the dog,” said Kevin Brennan, a wildlife biologist for the department of fish and game. “There isn’t any evidence to believe there are any public safety issues. If a mountain lion attacks a human being or attempts to attack a human being, we treat that as a public safety incident, and we have to destroy the animal. That’s not what happened here.”

The Blue Jay and Falcon campgrounds have been closed until May 8 so signs can be put up urging people to exercise caution around mountain lions, said a spokesman for the Cleveland National Forest.

Link

Looks like I got my wish. Good thing, because this little guy had a death penalty on his head if he had been caught.

Corvallis cougar returns to less urban home

by The Associated Press

Tuesday May 05, 2009, 9:02 AM

CORVALLIS — State fish and wildlife officials have given up trying to trap a young cougar reported in the northwest Corvallis area and have removed the trap they set to snare it.

They say they assume the big cat has retreated to a more natural habitat north or west of the city.

The cougar was seen at least seven times in two weeks and was photographed at least twice in back yards. It seriously injured a house cat, but the pet is expected to recover.

The Corvallis Gazette Times reported that the half-grown cougar was last seen in the city limits the evening of April 19.

It was considered dangerous at least in part because it seemed to have lost its fear of humans.

–The Associated Press