Trails Go Cold; Search for Cougar Called Off

Just before noon Wednesday, 14 tracking dogs and 11 men gave up a three-day search for a mountain lion that attacked and seriously injured a 6-year-old Huntington Beach boy Sunday at the Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park near San Juan Capistrano.

“The trails simply went cold, and the dogs seemed to have lost interest,” said Tony Gimbrone, district supervisor for Orange County parks.

“We are convinced that as of this moment there is not a single cougar in the park. We suspect the cat made its way into the Audubon Starr Ranch Sanctuary (which abuts the park’s northwest boundary).”

Gimbrone explained that trackers were prohibited from entering the wildlife sanctuary unless they were “in hot pursuit” of one of the big cats. “And there was no hot pursuit, just a very cold trail,” he said.

County officials said Wednesday that the park seven miles east of San Juan Capistrano will remain closed, but rangers will continue to monitor its trails. If a cougar is sighted, state game wardens will be notified immediately, they said.

Meanwhile, the victim of Sunday’s mauling, first-grader Justin Mellon, received a rabies shot Wednesday, then had a talk with a psychologist and “came home in high spirits,” said his father, Timothy Mellon, 28.

Despite the numerous tooth and claw wounds on his head, chest and back, which required more than 100 stitches to close, Justin is “enjoying all the toys and presents he’s getting” and “is beginning to talk a little bit about the attack,” his father said.

Justin was the second child to be attacked in the 7,500-acre wilderness park in seven months. Laura Michele Small, 5, of El Toro, was mauled last March 23 not far from the spot in Bell Canyon where Justin was attacked. The little girl remains partially paralyzed, has lost sight in one eye, has developed hypoplastic anemia and may need a bone marrow transfusion.

Her parents, Donald and Susan Small, have filed a $28-million lawsuit claiming negligence on the part of state and county officials and also the National Audubon Society for failing to warn the public of the mountain lion hazard.

Timothy Miller, manager of regional facilities for the county’s Parks and Recreation Department, said the future of the park as a public recreation area seven miles east of San Juan Capistrano will be discussed at 1 p.m. today in Santa Ana.

Miller said representatives of the state Department of Fish and Game, county animal control, the Orange County Board of Supervisors and other agencies will discuss alternatives ranging from a complete shutdown of the park indefinitely to resuming normal operation.

But he added that a final decision was unlikely to be reached at the meeting in the county Hall of Administration.

“I don’t believe any conclusions can be reached at one meeting,” Miller said. “I would suspect it will take a series of discussions because of the complex nature of the problem.”

Different Reactions

He said the issue of safety in the park now is clouded by reactions from officials and the general public after Sunday’s attack. Some have called for all mountain lions to be eradicated from the vicinity, while others have asked that the park be reopened and operated as it has been.

Most recently, Miller said, his office has been swamped with queries from equestrian groups fearing the loss of 18 miles of riding trails at Caspers.

“Those trails connect with others in the Cleveland National Forest,” Miller said. “If ours are closed, well, how do you get to the ones in the forest? Then there are the 62,000 people who visit the park every year.”

When the search was called off at 11:20 a.m. Wednesday, hunter Richard Orisio said the big cat’s trail went cold near the park’s boundary with the sanctuary.

“We followed the tracks that far, but they were old tracks,” said Orisio, a state-licensed tracker who brought his six tracking hounds from Waukena in Tulare County to join the hunt late Monday at the request of Fish and Game officers.

Orisio, whose father was a federal bounty hunter before a 1971 ban on killing mountain lions was declared when it was feared that the population had dwindled dangerously, said the big cats “are very conscious of their territories. . . . If you remove one, another will come in to take over the territory.”

It was Orisio with his hounds who captured a female cougar and her cub in Caspers Park last July.

Another tracker, Joel Shows of San Bernardino, and his eight dogs had begun the search late Sunday afternoon. Last March 24, Shows and his English Walker hounds tracked and captured a 115-pound male mountain lion thought to have been the animal that attacked Laura Small.

Miller said the tracking operation covered an area three miles long and about one mile wide. The estimated cost of the hunt was about $250 a day for each of the two groups of dogs.