Lion Sightings Force Irvine Park Closure

An unusually high number of mountain lion sightings in the city--including one this week--has forced the indefinite closure of the 150-acre trail area at the William R. Mason Regional Park for the first time in decades, officials said Friday.

“To be on the safe side, we decided to shut it down,” said Jerry F. Lahart, the supervising park ranger. Officials began posting new red and white warning signs around the park on Friday.

A lion sighting at Mason park Wednesday was the second in three weeks reported to county officials, Lahart said. Animal control officials said there have been a total of six reports of mountain lions in the area in the past two months.

“It seems like mountain lion behavior has been changing a little all over the United States,” Lahart said. “We are seeing more and more of these unusual occurrences. We are getting more and more close encounters with animals of this sort. There is the potential for definite concern.”

State Fish and Game Department officials said the mountain lion population in Orange County has grown rapidly over the past decade.

“The habitat is full of them,” said Patrick Moore, a Fish and Game spokesman. “They are now outgrowing (it). They are trying to expand their habitat and they are coming into the human habitat.

“We continuously have mountain lion sightings in Southern California, one or two a month.”

Mason is at least the second park to have been closed in recent years because of such sightings.

At the corner of University and Culver drives, most of the park is surrounded by homes and part of it extends into a rural area.

On Wednesday, a woman walking in the park notified officials that she had seen a mountain lion in the same area where the other sighting was reported earlier this month. Both sightings occurred in the park’s natural area, across the street from a 100-acre picnic area, softball field and other developed facilities.. Those areas will remain open.

Park staff have investigated the area and found no mountain lion tracks, Lahart said. State Fish and Game officials will inspect the site this weekend.

In recent years, no one has been attacked at the Mason park, Lahart said. But in 1986, a mountain lion grabbed 5-year-old Laura Small by the head with its jaws while the girl and her mother were searching for tadpoles at Ronald W. Caspers Regional Park.

The El Toro girl’s family won a $1.5-million settlement from the county. Small was blinded in her right eye, suffered brain damage and left partially paralyzed in the attack.

Only months later, 6-year-old Justin Mellon of Huntington Beach was mauled in the same park, which was closed for 60 days after the attack.

“Most of the attacks we’ve had have been (on) children,” Moore said. “They are small and kind of look like game. Mountain lions think they are prey.”

After the attacks, park officials adopted the policy of closing parks whenever a mountain lion was sighted.

The unusually high number of sightings reflects a rising mountain lion population. According to Fish and Game surveys, the population jumped from 2,400 in 1972, to 3,000 in 1982 and 4,100 in 1984. There were 5,100 mountain lions as of 1988, the last time a count was made, Moore said. Officials estimate the population is now 6,000.