Lion Sighting This Month Not Recorded

A Silverado Canyon couple said Friday that they saw a mountain lion while riding horses in Irvine Regional Park one night earlier this month and told a park ranger the next day, but the supervising ranger at the park said no written report was filed.

“I didn’t take it all that seriously until this all happened with the other lion,” said Lisa Pedersen of Silverado Canyon, referring to the mauling Oct. 19 of first-grader Justin Mellon of Huntington Beach by a mountain lion in the Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park, about 25 miles southeast.

Pedersen and her husband, Jeff, were riding on a trail in Irvine Regional Park, just east of Orange, about 8 p.m. on two “real trail-wise horses” when suddenly the horses “got spooked,” she said.

“All I could see was a big form,” Pedersen said. Her husband, who went to see what it was, came within about 50 feet of the animal when he recognized what it was, she said.

The mountain lion was walking down the middle of the path and was “not intimidated in the least,” said Pedersen, who has not ridden at night since then. “I don’t know what would have happened if we had been walking.”

‘A Little Irritated’

Pedersen said she reported the incident to a park ranger the next day, a Saturday. But, she said, the ranger did not seem to take the sighting seriously. “He just kind of smiled and said there are a lot of bobcats in the park,” she said. “I knew he wasn’t taking it very seriously. It was really not that big of a deal. I was a little irritated, but not that much. At the time it was just one of those things. Now it is a big deal.”

Mark Carlson, supervising ranger at the park, said Friday that he was trying to contact the Pedersens to confirm their story.

“I have a very limited recollection of this,” Carlson said. “It didn’t sound like it had a sense of immediacy about it. I recall someone approaching me and asking if there had been any sightings in the park. If they would have come out and said, ‘I saw a mountain lion last night,’ they would have had my attention right away.”

No one has reported a mountain lion sighting in the 477-acre park in at least eight years, Carlson said.

“It’s not like we are trying to ignore these things,” Carlson said. With the report being a day old, he said, “whatever they saw would have been long gone. There wouldn’t have been much action we would have taken anyway.”

The county Parks and Recreation Department will be following up, said director Hal Krizan.