O.C. Bans Minors at Its Biggest Park : Liability: Supervisors cite two previous mountain lion attacks on children in order affecting Caspers Wilderness Park.

Fearful of the ongoing risk of mountain lion attacks, the Orange County Board of Supervisors has banned children from Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park, the county’s largest park and site of two maulings in the mid-1980s, officials said Wednesday.

The board’s decision to ban people under the age of 18, which goes into effect Monday, was blamed on the $2-million court award last August to the family of an El Toro girl who was mauled by a mountain lion at the park in 1986, said Robert G. Fisher, the county’s director of harbors, beaches and parks.

Shortly after that sizable jury award, the board closed the majority of the park to children, with admittance granted only if the youngster was accompanied by an adult and a written release was signed. Children were also limited to the park’s visitor center, playground and picnic areas.

But with another court case on a subsequent mauling waiting in the wings, the board decided this week that the risk for further incidents and liability was too great, Fisher said. He said the supervisors’ decision to ban children from the park, which came in closed session Tuesday, was reached reluctantly.

“It is a real shame,” Fisher said. “I feel very bad, being the parks director, that we have to keep people from that parkland. This is a very cautious and conservative approach as to what to do.”

Park users were irked by the board’s decision, which they said was an overreaction.

“The kids will lose a lot by having an area denied to them,” said Ken Croker, a Sierra Club spokesman. “It’s a sad commentary on how litigation in our society allows natural acts to control our policies. We have to come to terms with living in our natural environment. That’s a risk inherent with going camping in the mountains, just like swimming in the ocean.”

Fisher said the closure may be temporary, pending the county’s appeal of the $2-million award and the possibility of state legislation that would remove the county’s liability in such incidents. The county is actively pursuing the drafting of such legislation, Fisher said.

The county was forced to rethink its policies relating to Caspers Park in the aftermath of the Laura Small case, Fisher said. A jury ruled in August that the county was at fault for not providing adequate warning when the girl, then 5 years old, was mauled by a mountain lion.

“We had to give some additional thought to the situation after that case,” Fisher said. “The jury awarded a substantial settlement . . . and there was a second mauling. That is certainly a factor on our minds.”

Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, whose district includes Caspers Park, refused to comment on the board’s decision. Michael M. Ruane, the director of the county’s Environmental Management Agency, did not return a phone call from The Times.

Around the state, parks officials called the ban unusual and unprecedented.

Carl Maier, chief of field services for the California Department of Parks and Recreation, which oversees 1.3 million acres of parks statewide, said he had never heard of such a ban.

“It hasn’t happened in the state system,” Maier said. “We have had some animal problems, particularly with bears and campers, but nothing severe. Our experience is that mountain lions steer clear of humans.”

Terry Mansfield, a senior biologist with the state Department of Fish and Game who testified at the Small trial, agreed that the ban was unusual. The two maulings at Caspers during the mid-1980s, which occurred within six months of each other, remain the only documented injuries of humans by mountain lions in 83 years, he said.

“Caspers is certainly a unique situation,” Mansfield said. “The fact that the only documented incidents since 1909 have occurred there, both within months of each other, is highly unusual. No one is exactly sure why.”

But Mansfield said that the lion population is growing, as is the human population, and that evidence of lion sightings is also growing.

Although many are never verified, reports of mountain lion sightings are becoming commonplace in South County, said Sgt. Marie Hulett-Curtner, a spokeswoman for Orange County animal control. Indeed, there was one about 7:30 a.m. Wednesday off Avenida Calita in San Juan Capistrano, she said.

“It’s become a routine thing--we get two or three every week,” she said.

Mansfield estimated that there may be as many as six to 10 lions frequenting Caspers Park. But it would be very unusual if they were there all at the same time, he said.

F. C. Buchter, the staff counsel for the state Department of Parks and Recreation, also called the events at Caspers unusual.

“A mountain lion mauling is one of the rarest events there is. So is the closing of a park,” Buchter said. “I can’t recall it ever happening in the state park system. We have often enforced curfews, but we have never closed a park to minors on the basis of a wild animal.”

The roots of the closure date back to March 23, 1986, when Laura Small was looking for tadpoles in a small stream near a nature trail. A cougar surprised her by jumping from a bush, grabbed her in its jaws and dragged her into the brush.

She was rescued by a passing hiker who swung a stick at the lion until it released her. The girl survived, but was blinded in one eye and partially paralyzed.

Only months later, in October, 1986, a Huntington Beach boy was also attacked in the park but was rescued by his father.

Although attorneys in the Small case argued that the county was not responsible for the action of a wild animal, the jury ruled that the county was negligent and had failed to adequately warn park visitors.

Buchter, who said he is “intensely interested in the case” because of its implications for the state park system, said his department is considering filing a brief with the appeals court. The state has argued successfully several times that it cannot be held responsible for natural conditions in its parks.

Since the two maulings, and the subsequent limits of access placed on minors, attendance at 12-year-old Caspers Park has dwindled. The number of visitors hit a peak of 62,313 in 1985, the year before the lion attacks, according to county figures. But, since then, attendance has shrunk to half the old high.

The sagging attendance might really be to blame for the ban, said Paul Polinski, the president of the 35-member Caspers Park Volunteer Naturalists. He called the closure to children “a damn shame.”

“As a volunteer and a naturalist, this is devastating,” Polinski said. “The park is there for one reason, to show people what this area was like 100 years ago. In my opinion, this is the worst thing they could do.”

Times staff writer Donnette Dunbar contributed to this story.