MOUNTAIN LIONS : Hunting Ban has Teeth, Too : Some wildlife experts oppose the state ban on hunting cougars, whose species is not endangered.

Despite two mountain lion attacks on Orange County children in 1986, California has enacted some of the toughest laws to protect cougars, although they are not endangered and their numbers are growing statewide.

“Cougars are pretty tightly protected now,” said Earl Lauppe, a wildlife management supervisor with the state Department of Fish and Game.

After the Orange County attacks, some parents called for stepped up hunting of mountain lions, but many environmentalists opposed the proposals to “thin out” cougars with controlled hunts.

In June, 1990, the Planning and Conservation League, a Sacramento-based environmental group, succeeded in getting passed into law a statewide initiative to ban the hunting of mountain lions, except in cases where cattle have been attacked repeatedly.

Many wildlife experts have said that California’s restrictions are bad law because the big cats are not an endangered species and their population has steadily increased for almost 70 years.

“I’ve always said that biology wouldn’t have a damn thing to do with the status of mountain lions. Emotion was going to rule,” said Richard A. Weaver, a retired Department of Fish and Game expert on mountain lions who opposed the no-hunt initiative.

Gerald Meral, director of the Planning and Conservation League, said the initiative was badly needed because hunting mountain lions was “cruel, unfair and unsporting.”

In Orange County, the separate mountain lion attacks in 1986 on then-5-year-old Laura Small of El Toro and then-6-year-old Justin Mellon of Huntington Beach prompted a flurry of reactions. Both children were attacked in Caspers Wilderness Park, east of San Juan Capistrano.

Caspers Park was temporarily closed in 1986, then reopened with warning signs about mountain lions. No cougar attacks on humans in Orange County have been reported in the past five years.

California had only about 600 to 800 mountain lions in the 1920s, according to Terry Mansfield, a wildlife specialist for the Department of Fish and Game. But by 1988, he said, the number of cougars statewide had grown to “a conservative estimate of 5,100.”

There are an estimated 35 mountain lions in Orange County’s Santa Ana Mountains, according to Paul Beier, a researcher who has been studying the local cougar population for the past three years. Twenty of the cats are adults; 15 are cubs.

Beier said the number of local mountain lions is stable--neither growing nor decreasing. Wildlife experts predict, however, that as suburban development moves closer to the mountain habitat, fewer cougars will survive in Orange County.

Beier said the local study has involved capturing mountain lions and putting collars on them that send out a radio-tracking signal. A total of 17 cougars now have the “radio collars,” Beier said.

By studying the range and habits of the Orange County cougars, researchers say they have learned, among other things, that the animals are shy and generally avoid humans. Very infrequently a mountain lion--usually an adolescent animal--will venture into a populated area.

“You have instances such as the case earlier this year when a cougar wandered into somebody’s yard in Irvine and was treed by dogs,” Beier said. But he added that such cases are rare and that cougars stick to the wild areas, where they search for deer, their primary source of food.

The two 1986 cougar attacks on children are statistically rare, wildlife experts say. They note that in the last 100 years there have only been 53 attacks on humans across the country.

“It just doesn’t happen very often,” Beier said. “When people tell me they’re worried about mountain lion attacks, I tell them, ‘You’re much more likely to be killed by being struck by lightning or being bitten by a rattlesnake or being bitten by a black widow spider.’ ”

In the unlikely event a person comes face to face with a cougar, the best advice is to remember that cougars basically fear humans. “The thing to do is make noise and throw a stick at it,” Beier said. “But never run away. When a cougar sees a person run, it’s like seeing a deer run. And a cougar knows what to do with a deer.”