Hunt for Lone Male Lion Is Called Off

Still alive, the last male lion in the Santa Monica Mountains is no longer being pursued by the government hunter who was dispatched after the lion killed several goats belonging to a local landowner.

The radio-collared mountain lion, or puma, known as P1, continued to move north and west of the corralled goats after the hunter and his dogs chased him this week, according to a team of biologists tracking the lion for the National Park Service.

“P1 has moved farther away and is feeding on a mule deer kill,” said Woody Smeck, superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. “So he’s back on his natural prey and out of danger.”

The permit issued Tuesday by a California Fish and Game warden to kill P1 alarmed state and federal park officials who have been studying him and a female, which they have also caught, weighed and collared, to determine the viability of the few remaining mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains.

They feared that the loss of the lone male would have led to the extinction of lions in these mountains, which have become cut off from other wild lands by freeways and urban development. The permit to kill the lion, which has been tracked for 18 months by radio signals and starred in a National Geographic television show, prompted government officials to reconsider a state law that requires wardens to issue a “permit to kill” mountain lions after the confirmed loss of livestock.

But Brian A. Sweeney, a land speculator who holds the state Fish and Game permit to kill the lion, has insisted that he never intended to destroy the lion that he blames for the deaths of as many as nine goats that were part of a herd on land he owns between Pepperdine University and Topanga State Park.

“We are entitled to kill it, but we aren’t doing it,” said Sweeney, whose permit expires Friday. “We don’t allow hunting on our property. We never had, and we never will.”

Sweeney said he authorized his animal manager, Gary Isbell, to bring in the lion hunter earlier this week to frighten away the lion after the 143-pound cat returned a second night to kill goats despite Isbell’s shouts, horn honking and flashing of truck lights.

“I gave strict instructions to Gary: ‘Try to scare that lion away from coming back to eat my goats,’ ” Sweeney said. Sweeney said the hunter, a federal employee, never tried to harm the lion. “I’m sure he didn’t try to kill the lion. I cannot imagine that he could do that, knowing how I feel about that.”

But Sweeney’s and Isbell’s version of the eight-hour hunt that night differed from the account of the agency that employs the hunter, the wildlife services program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

The hunter, Leo Fisher, could not be reached directly for comment. But Larry Hawkins, public affairs director for the wildlife services program, checked with Fisher and said that Fisher had set out to kill the lion.

“He was there to take that lion, to use lethal control,” said Hawkins. “He wasn’t there to haze it. He wasn’t there to scare it. That’s not the kind of work we do.”

Hawkins said neither Fisher nor any other wildlife service specialists, as the government hunters are officially termed, plan to return to the mountains to renew the pursuit.

But on Tuesday night, he said, the intent was understood by everyone, including National Park Service biologists, who were sorry “one of their lions was in trouble” and gave Fisher a special wrench so he could retrieve the expensive radio collar from around the animal’s neck and return it to them.

Hawkins said that two coonhounds picked up the lion’s scent at the point of recently killed goats on Sweeney’s property about 8 p.m. and began the pursuit. Isbell followed.

“They treed the lion once, and then it jumped out of the tree and ran about 100 yards and was treed again,” Hawkins said. As the men approached, the lion jumped out of the tree and ran up onto a rocky ledge.

“Leo [Fisher] saw the lion on the ledge,” Hawkins said. “That’s where he discharged his firearm. He missed.”

Hawkins said Fisher continued to track the lion into the early morning hours. “He saw it one more time and was not able to get another shot. So he collected the dogs and abandoned the hunt.”

But Isbell, a 52-year-old cowboy from Oak View, said that Fisher never tried to kill the lion.

“We didn’t try to kill the lion,” Isbell said. “If we wanted to kill it, we could have. We had it treed three times and we could have killed it -- bam -- right there. Leo shot just to scare him.”