Cougar Killing Brings Sadness, Hope

The slaying of a mountain lion in the Santa Ana Mountains this past week by a livestock caretaker provided a harsh twist on the good news-bad news scenario.

“It is a tragedy that this animal was killed,” said California Department of Fish and Game biologist Steve Torres, who for a decade oversaw the state program designed to protect mountain lions, including the fast-dwindling cougar population in Southern California.

“The optimism is that they’re still out there.”

Just half an hour east of Disneyland, a handful of the animals known to Native Americans as “Ghost Cats” still roam the steep ridgelines and plunging crevasses of the Cleveland National Forest, which straddles Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties and hopscotches all the way to the Mexican border.

Cougar habitat has been sliced by freeways as well as toll roads, and swallowed by housing and commercial development. But the cats have hung on precariously at the top of the food chain in the very mountains where the last grizzly bear in Southern California was trapped and shot in 1908.

Last week’s killing was a throwback to that frontier past. A man caring for two goats in the steep, narrow, historic mining community known as Silverado Canyon shot the young mountain lion about 8:45 p.m. Monday, while animal control officers, county sheriff’s deputies and others watched helplessly.

An animal control officer walking with the man toward the goat pen happened to shine his flashlight on the mountain lion, and the man fired “very suddenly,” said Orange County Health Care Agency spokeswoman Pat Markley.

“It was 50 yards from my front door,” said neighbor Lauralee Barrow, who witnessed the shooting from her porch.

She said sheriff’s deputies were combing the hillside above the pen when the man fired. Several officers, with weapons drawn, immediately ordered him to lie face down on the driveway, and berated him for endangering himself and others.

“I don’t blame them” for reacting as they did, she said.

“When I saw them dragging the cat down I just cried .... If you live in the country you have to be prepared for wildlife. If you don’t like it, move to Irvine. This is that animal’s home, we’re just visiting here. Where is it supposed to go, Huntington Beach? Downey?”

Barrow said she was furious at the mountain lion for killing the goats, named Bambi and Oprah, which she had known for five years.

“But that doesn’t mean you go kill it. The goats were already dead.”

Alice Phillips, a jewelry maker whose studio is a stone’s throw away on Wildcat Canyon Road, agreed: “Why couldn’t they shoot in the air?”

Phillips said canyon residents are aware of the hazards of living in an area inhabited by cougars, and that keeping goats -- especially in an uncovered pen -- added to the risk.

“That’s like putting out bait,” she said.

Experts said the killing could have been avoided had the pen been covered. Neighbors said the homeowner was in the habit of taking the goats inside his house at night. But because of illness he was forced to move a month ago, and the caretaker had been coming to feed and tend to the livestock.

The mountain lion was a young, healthy female weighing 102 pounds, said Lt. Angel Raton, a Fish and Game officer who participated in a necropsy of the animal.

“She was quite fat for her size,” he said. “That’s prime mountain lion habitat there, because of the slope, and the fact that there’s deer and rabbits everywhere.”

Raton said there was a good chance that a yearlong drought combined with a fire in remote Gypsum Canyon over the summer had driven smaller prey down to settled areas.

The caretaker, who could not be reached and whose name was not released, will not be charged, said county and local authorities. Under California law, it is illegal to hunt or kill a mountain lion -- unless it is attacking humans or personal property.

There were 149 mountain lions killed statewide in 2002 through “depredation,” meaning they were slain after attacking livestock or household pets.

But many mountain lions killed in the Santa Ana Mountains die after being hit by vehicles, according to Fish and Game officials and others.

In a 1993 study of “wildlife corridor” movement in the Santa Anas, Paul Beier of Northern Arizona University fitted 32 cougars with electronic collars and tracked them for five years. Only seven survived. A third of those that died were hit by cars.

Other causes of death included poor health, fights with other animals and gunshot wounds from people protecting livestock and pets. Beier also found that cougar encounters with and attacks on humans were becoming more frequent as development continued to encroach on the wild areas.

“We are building sprawl in its dinner plate; we are walking and backpacking on its dinner plate,” said Lynn Sadler, executive director of the Mountain Lion Foundation, a national advocacy group based in Sacramento.

Although certain subspecies -- such as the Florida panther -- have been declared endangered, the species as a whole has not.

“We have no idea how many are out there, and we have no idea how many we need” to maintain the species’ viability, Sadler said.

She said the mountain lion is a keystone species in the Santa Anas.

“As the mountain lion goes, so goes the ecosystem,” she said. “When you lose a keystone species, you have a cascade of extinctions that will follow, and in a relatively short period of time.”

Fish and Game biologists hope to track the remaining cougars in the area over the next year or so, if budget cutbacks don’t interfere. Male mountain lions, which lead solitary lives except during brief mating periods, each require 150 square miles of habitat. Females, which require about 80 square miles, will socialize occasionally.

Raton, who has patrolled the Santa Ana Mountains for years, said the death toll on the nearby Eastern tollway and at the hands of homeowners endangers the species’ chances of survival.

Transportation Corridor Agencies spokeswoman Lisa Telles said studies had been conducted before construction of the toll road to determine where it should be elevated to accommodate wildlife. Despite those precautions, Raton and others said, there have been numerous instances in which cougars have become “road kill” since the tollway opened. Telles said she was not aware of current statistics.

Inbreeding is another concern, because as wildlife corridors and large swaths of habitat continue to be eliminated, the already fragile population becomes more isolated.

“They’re one of the most beautiful creatures we have in this area. We are really blessed,” Raton said.

“They have beautiful eyes, they’re very alert, and they’re very well-adapted to their natural environment. They’re magnificent.”