‘Close Encounters’ : Cougars Sightings on Increase, Authorities Say

While there is some dispute about the frequency of attacks by mountain lions on people in California, most authorities agree that incidents involving humans and cougars in Orange County are increasing.

According to official state records, the last mountain lion attack before the March 23 attack on Laura Michele Small in Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park took place in 1909. However, according to Lee Fitzhugh, an authority on lions at UC Davis, other sources report a “provoked” California attack in 1917, an attack on a woman on horseback in 1920 and an attack on two schoolboys in 1925.

Fitzhugh said the number of “close encounters” between lions and humans in California has increased from one a year in 1981 to 18 in 1985.

Here is a chronology of recent lion sightings in Orange County:

October, 1983: Mountain lion sighted near Interstate 5 in the Lake Forest-El Toro area.

December, 1983: Body of a mountain lion, evidently hit by a vehicle, found on Santiago Canyon Road.

May, 1985: 115-pound cougar found in the backyard tree of a Mission Viejo home; captured and later released in Cleveland National Forest.

June, 1985: Another 115-pound mountain lion captured east of Tustin; also released in Cleveland National Forest.

March, 1986: Laura Michele Small attacked and mauled in Caspers Wilderness Park, near San Juan Capistrano; lion suspected in attack tracked and killed the following day.

April, 1986: Caspers Park officials announce all hiking trails and campgrounds in the park free of mountain lion tracks; four days later fresh tracks of a 70-pound cougar found in Bell Canyon.

May, 1986: Warnings posted in Caspers Park after big cat spotted near the park’s Live Oak campground.

July, 1986: Female lion and cub captured in the “same general area” as the Laura Small attack; they are later placed in Utah zoo.

August, 1986: U.S. Forest Service firefighter and spare-time trapper Kenneth Jordan, 29, encounters a cougar while jogging in Caspers Park but drives off the lion.

In addition to these incidents, two cougars have been killed on Camp Pendleton roads so far this year.