Fillmore Residents Call for Trapping of Stray Cougar

Half a dozen mountain lion sightings, the mauling of a second large dog and the disappearance of a third have prompted south Fillmore residents to demand that a cougar roaming their rural area be trapped or killed.

“We’ve lived around here a lifetime and we’ve never had the cats out here in the orchards,” said Mary Ann Berrington, whose husband was startled by a mountain lion early Dec. 15 as he reached for a newspaper in his driveway.

“This indicates to me that this animal has either gotten too old to hunt regular game or stumbled on to something real easy.”

But state wildlife officials say they cannot hunt a mountain lion until it poses a greater threat to humans, and they say they can issue hunting permits only when an attack is documented. In this case, two residents have received 10-day permits, but heavy rains kept them from tracking the cat.

Like other longtime ranchers in the area, Berrington said the cat’s boldness has, for the first time, made her nervous in the rural setting.

“I don’t mean to be paranoid or hysterical,” she said, “but now when I put my dogs out at night, I have my flashlight in one hand, a double-barreled shotgun in the other and a dog to control. It’s a little like juggling.”

The mountain lion’s presence first captured attention Jan. 2 when Paul Glen Neuman, a screenwriter who lives on Guiberson Road, watched a large cat snatch his 75-pound Siberian husky, Brittany, from his front porch.

Since then, residents have twice spotted a mountain lion crossing roads in the area, and a worker at a nursery found large paw prints outside the trailer he lives in.

On Jan. 16, Jesus Garcia, a caretaker on a ranch in Wiley Canyon, heard his large mixed-breed dog barking at about 9 p.m. The next morning, he found fresh paw prints 3 1/2 inches wide and drag marks leading into a creek drainage, but no sign of the dog.

Publicity over the attack on Neuman’s husky has also prompted residents to compile a list of earlier incidents, including:

* The disappearance of a 60-pound dog from the home of a citrus ranch foreman during the first week in December. The home is off Guiberson Road, within two miles of Neuman’s residence.

* The appearance of a mountain lion in the Berringtons’ driveway at 4:50 a.m. Dec. 15. The cougar then loped into an orchard where it lay until dawn.

* A ranch worker’s encounter with a mountain lion near the Little Red School between Santa Paula and Fillmore. The man was bending down in an orchard on Dec. 21 or 22 when a cat leaped within feet of him, then ran away.

* A second cougar sighting by Mary Ann Berrington on Dec. 29. The cat darted across Guiberson Road about 5 p.m.

Alarmed by the frequency of the sightings, some south Fillmore residents are now calling on the state Department of Fish and Game to take action against what they believe is a single, maverick cougar. They worry that it will soon take more pets or target a small child.

“People don’t want to just randomly start shooting mountain lions,” said Larry Shiells, one of two residents granted a permit to hunt a mountain lion in January. “That’s not it at all.

“People want to just take care of this one cat,” he said.

Berrington said she would like to see game wardens trap the cougar and move it to a more remote area.

But Capt. Roger Reese of the state Department of Fish and Game said game wardens cannot legally track and kill mountain lions unless they attack a person or pose an “imminent threat” to public safety.

So far, he said, the situation south of Fillmore has not reached that level.

“We’re concerned about the number of incidents that have happened in the same area,” Reese said. “The word out to the wardens is if they get a report of something happening in that area to make it a higher priority than it normally is.”

The state’s cougar population has boomed since 1990, when voters passed Proposition 117, giving the animal special protected status.

Sightings in Ventura County are common, Reese said. During the past two weeks, he said, one mountain lion was shot near Ojai after it threatened horses, and an Oak View resident was issued a permit to kill a cougar after losing a sheep.

Reese said game wardens do not know whether one animal is responsible for all of the encounters south of Fillmore.

Larry Sitton, a senior biologist with Fish and Game, speculated that one or more cougars could be prowling into the orchards and ranches because they have found an easy food source--family pets. Or breeding may have created overcrowding, he said.

“Mountain lions are very curious about people,” he said. “Throughout the whole state--from Oregon to the Mexican border--we’ve found they like to watch people.”