State Officials Defend Killing of Puma

State fish and game officials, under fire from wildlife advocates for shooting a 140-pound mountain lion believed to have killed three dogs in the San Gabriel Mountain foothills, on Monday said they tracked and killed the animal in order to protect pets and people.

“The lions are becoming bolder and are really being forced into more contact with humans,” Fish and Game Warden Ken Walton said.

He urged residents of Glendora and Claremont to keep a close watch on pets and small children in the wake of the mountain lion’s attack on a Doberman pinscher in Glendora early Sunday. About 21 hours after the attack, the male mountain lion was shot by game wardens.

Wildlife advocates on Monday said it was unnecessary to kill the lion, a member of a species designated “protected” under state law.

“Is (shooting) the only option we have?” asked Martine Colette, director of the Wildlife Waystation, a nonprofit rescue and rehabilitation facility in Little Tujunga Canyon. “We can’t just be blowing away every mountain lion, fox, raccoon and coyote that comes up.”

If someone had called the facility, she said, rescue workers would have trapped the mountain lion and taken it in, at no expense to the public. The Wildlife Waystation, she said, has 25 to 30 mountain lions.

Cal Poly Pomona zoologist Glenn R. Stewart said the animal should have been trapped and relocated elsewhere in the wild. “I hate to see a lion killed for just the sake of its taking a few domestic pets,” Stewart said. “It’s unfortunate people would regard the lion as a real threat because in most cases it is not.”

But Curt Taucher, spokesman for the state Department of Fish and Game, said the puma had become “too familiar” with residential neighborhoods and would return to them.

The animal--believed responsible for at least three dogs’ deaths since March--may have been injured in a trap and resorted to attacking pets because they were easy prey, Taucher said.

Officials said mountain lion attacks on humans are rare but not unheard of. They cited the case of Laura Small, an El Toro girl mauled five years ago. Her family’s negligence suit against Orange County is being tried.

Hers is one of two reported cases of humans being attacked by mountain lions in California since 1909. The other was an Orange County boy also attacked in 1986.

Mountain lion experts and state officials said the lions are being sighted in residential areas for several reasons.

A nearly 20-year state ban on the hunting of mountain lions has increased their numbers to more than 5,000, up from 2,400 in 1972.

In addition, housing developments have encroached on their habitat. Further, experts said, the five-year drought has sent the lions’ natural prey--deer, fox and squirrel--farther into residential areas looking for water. The lions, they said, follow their food supply.

Glendora animal control officials said they began posting warning signs about mountain lions in May in the San Gabriel Mountain foothills and on nature trails, especially near Big Dalton Dam.

The Doberman’s owner, Wesley Purkiss, said Monday he had feared for his life when he witnessed the attack on his dog.

“I was scared to death,” said Purkiss, 40. “I was looking for something to throw.”