Park Closure Extended After Cougar Seen

A visitor from Indiana spotted a mountain lion in O’Neill Regional Park Monday, prompting county officials to extend the park closing they ordered last week.

After meeting together, Harold J. Krizan, head of the county Parks and Recreation Department, and Tim Miller, manager of regional facilities for the department, decided that the park in Trabuco Canyon will remain closed to the public at least until Friday.

The park was evacuated and closed last Friday after several sets of cougar tracks were found in and near the picnic area.

Friday is the day when Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park, scene of two mountain lion attacks on children during 1986, is scheduled to reopen, with visitors--especially children--placed under a number of restrictions in the interest of safety.

Permit System Discussed

The O’Neill sighting “has given us greater justification” to set up regulations for public use of the park, according to Krizan.

“At my meeting with Miller, we discussed the possibility of setting up a modified permit system somewhat similar to the one we have imposed at Caspers,” Krizan said. “We didn’t make any final conclusion, but we will meet during the next couple of days to work it out.”

The sighting Monday at O’Neill was made by Donna Thompson, a visitor from Indiana and one of several campers evacuated from the park last Friday, Miller said.

“She had returned to the park to get her camping trailer,” he said. “She saw what she described as a large brown animal with a long tail near the concession stand in the picnic area, which is only about 100 yards from the main entrance gate.”

Park rangers and wardens from the state Department of Fish and Game examined the site and confirmed her report after finding tracks that were “very fresh and definitely those of a cougar,” Miller said.

He added that rangers and Department of Fish and Game wardens, raking the picnic site and nearby trails every day so that new paw prints could be discovered, have determined that there are at least two cats visiting the park, one a full-grown adult, the other a smaller juvenile.

Fresh tracks have been found every day since Friday, mostly in the Arroyo Trabuco, a long, narrow section of the park that follows the Trabuco Creek bed. That portion of the park is about six miles northwest of Caspers.

Krizan said that whatever action is decided on for O’Neill will be subject to approval by the county Board of Supervisors.

Caspers was closed in October after a 6-year-old Huntington Beach boy was clawed and bitten. Last March, a 5-year-old El Toro girl was mangled seriously.

After the October closure, supervisors decided that children will be allowed only in the picnic area, and adults, who must walk the trails in groups of at least two, will be required to sign documents acknowledging that they are aware of possible dangers from the wilderness park’s wildlife.

A study program carried out by Department of Fish and Game personnel in early November resulted in the capture of two lions, which were fitted with radio transmitters and released. Miller said that since then, the radios have indicated that the cats spent about two weeks in the Arroyo Trabuco portion of O’Neill Park but recently have moved back to Caspers and thus probably are not the ones whose tracks have turned up at O’Neill in the last few days.