Experts Caution Against Overreaction to Attacks

Wildlife experts urged caution Monday amid calls for the eradication of mountain lions from Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park, the scene of two lion attacks on children since March.

The “near tragedy” of the lion attacks should have no impact on general state policy, said Brian J. Kahn, president of the state Fish and Game Commission.

Although it may now be time for a limited hunt of cougars in South Orange County, Kahn said Monday, the idea that allowing hunting of lions will prevent attacks is nonsense.

“Many people are concerned that . . . taking any of the animals would lead to their extermination. They are well-intentioned but poorly informed,” Kahn said. The “flip side” are those “who want lions wiped out entirely”--and neither position is realistic, Kahn said.

Injured Sunday was 6-year-old Justin Mellon, a Huntington Beach first grader who was attacked by a cougar that attempted to drag him off as he walked ahead of his family on a hiking trail. The incident took place near the site of a similar attack on March 23 that left 5-year-old Laura Michele Small of El Toro badly mauled.

A number of other mountain lion sightings were reported in the park over the summer. And on Saturday, just a day before the attack on Justin Mellon, members of a Cypress family had a scare when they found themselves only 15 feet from a lion in the brush.

The incidents renewed criticism of governmental agencies for failing to adequately warn the public about the mountain lion danger.

Richard J. Staskus, a San Jose lawyer who has filed a $28-million lawsuit against several government agencies and wildlife groups on behalf of the Small family, said Sunday’s attack shows “a conscious disregard of public safety by each of those employees in the park.”

Natural areas, such as Caspers Park and adjacent land, have the capacity to “carry” a limited number of cats, Staskus said.

“When that carrying capacity is exceeded, you get problems because of unbalanced ecosystem,” Staskus said. “You compound the density problem when you put people--especially young children--right in the middle of it. Especially children, because for the lion they are the same thing as a calf, a colt or a fawn.”

Park officials “gambled and they lost. And that’s the honest truth,” Staskus said.

In the lawsuit, filed in Orange County Superior Court Oct. 10, Staskus claimed that warnings to Caspers visitors before the March 23 attack were inadequate. Park-goers were warned of danger from rattlesnakes and poison oak, but not mountain lions, according to the lawsuit.

The wilderness park was closed for one month after the Small attack. When it reopened, park officials had posted signs alerting visitors to the presence of mountain lions.

‘That’s Not a Warning’

“They advise you that mountain lions are present in the community, that they are an important part of the ecosystem, and if you see one, to stay away,” Staskus said. “That’s not a warning. What they put up is completely inadequate to discharge their duty of due care owed to park visitors.”

County officials declined comment on Staskus’ remarks, citing the litigation.

Other criticism came Monday from Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach), whose district includes the park. He said Sunday’s attack proves that government in general has gone too far enacting “stupid laws” to protect the environment.

“It is terribly unfortunate,” said Ferguson, “but it will probably take some more incidents of this kind before the people will rise up and ask who made all these stupid laws.

“I have never agreed with choosing to protect animals over human beings. . . . Nobody is against protecting animals in the wild somewhere, but Orange County is not the wild.”

He continued: “ . . . The government in the United States has followed the dictates of environmentalists for 16 years, and now young children are starting to get bitten and dragged off by crocodiles and wildcats. I’m going to put in strong legislation that will limit wildlife in areas that are in close proximity to urbanized areas. I know it won’t go anywhere.”

‘3 Million People, 5,000 Lions’

Kahn and others said there is no simple solution to a problem that is a direct result of urbanization encroaching upon wilderness areas.

“What we have in this state is 30 million people, approximately 5,000 mountain lions,” Kahn said. “If we allowed sport hunting, my guess is that we would have a take of between 100 and 300 lions a year. And that’s probably on the high side.”

Sport hunting of mountain lions has been banned in California since 1971.

“The fact is that every other state that has lions in the Western United States allows limited hunting of lions, and they all have healthy lion populations,” Kahn said.

Kahn said that 15 male mountain lions have been taken over the last three years in an area near Lake Tahoe which experienced predatory attacks on sheep. Such a hunt in Orange County would risk wiping out several lions in a bid to assure that the cat responsible for the Caspers attacks is exterminated, Kahn said.

Noting that urban residents are flocking to wilderness areas, Kahn decried what he called the “Bambi-ized concept of nature--it’s beautiful, but it’s also rough stuff.”

This view was echoed Monday by Terry Mansfield, a wildlife management supervisor with the state Department of Fish and Game.

‘Invading Lion Habitats’

“Obviously any large wildlife species can be potentially dangerous to humans,” Mansfield said. “But black bears and deer injure more people every year than mountain lions.”

Mansfield pointed out that “humans are invading lion habitats” by turning natural areas into housing and by visiting wilderness areas in larger and larger numbers.

Sam Jojola, a special agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who has researched ocelots and other cats, said that “it is very rare for cougars, or mountain lions, to attack people.” The animals “have been known to follow people in wilderness areas out of curiosity,” rather than any predatory purpose, Jojola said.

Kahn agreed that reported mountain lion attacks on humans are “extremely rare.”

But Lee Fitzhugh, an extension wildlife specialist at UC Davis who has been invited by Orange County officials to consult on the situation at Caspers Wilderness Park, said that the two attacks on children were not surprising to him.

A national authority on lion behavior, Fitzhugh said that factors contributing to attacks on humans were a large lion population, often living in proximity to urban developments; a large number of people using lion habitats for recreation; and allowing the cats “to be gradually accustomed to people as a natural element” of their environment.

Children appear to be more at risk, Fitzhugh said. The kind of behavior likely to provoke an attack, he said, included “running or quick movements” and “excited conversation by children in groups.” On the other hand, he said, “being motionless does not elicit the predatory attack. Standing still is almost a means of defense.”

Cleveland Amory, head of the Fund for Animals, said in reference to Sunday’s incident that “it was wonderfully heroic for the boy’s father to have done what he did” in fighting off this particular cougar.

But, Amory said, “let’s please not take vengeance on an animal that,” as a species, “is itself heroic.”

The incident, he said, is an example of “the always-difficult problem of man and beast moving together in a woods-like situation. . . . Living with wildlife is dangerous, and steps should be taken to reduce that danger to the most remote possible.”

Ban Expired in January

By state statute, the mountain lion has been a game animal in California since last January, when a 15-year hunting ban expired. But because the state Fish and Game Commission has yet to define a season, no sports hunting has begun.

Last year, Gov. George Deukmejian vetoed a bill by Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside) that would have required a comprehensive study of the mountain lion’s habitat and population before sports hunting resumed. But Deukmejian said the Fish and Game Commission already had “appropriate regulatory authority,” and he expressed confidence that it would manage the mountain lion population “in an intelligent and responsible manner to ensure the continued viability of the species.”

Legislation dealing with the state’s mountain lion management policies “was probably the most controversial and most emotional” of environmental debates before the Legislature during the last two years, said Linda Adams, chief consultant to the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee.

Presley’s bill, which Deukmejian vetoed, was one of two in 1985. A separate bill by Assemblyman Norm Waters (D-Plymouth), which would have lifted the hunting ban without a study, died in the Senate Committee on Natural Resources, which Presley chairs.

Times staff writer Kenneth F. Bunting, in Sacramento, contributed to this story.