Another Lion Problem in CA

[BobR]

BobMc sent me this today. This board would not let me post the story because it is too long. What happened to the other CA lion thread?
BobR

www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/Stories/0,1413,91~3089~1884200,00.html

[jdickey]

:(Wow... now that's scary! Reminds you of the stories about the Bengal tigers stalking villagers!

[Bobcat]

BobR-The other thread is still there, just look down a few threads.........


Thanks for the heads up on this one......

Here is the gist of the story:

Hopland tribal officer kills mountain lion
By MARK HEDGES/The Daily Journal

On the very night state residents learned of a gruesome mountain lion incident that left one man dead and a woman seriously injured in Southern California's Orange County, a mountain lion was shot and killed by tribal police on the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians Reservation.

The lion, a 75-pound "sub adult," was reported by residents there to be menacing an area of houses where a number of people, including many small children, live.

"It was about 10 to 15 yards away," said Jerry Boesel, game warden for the California Department of Fish and Game in a sector of Mendocino and Lake Counties that includes Hopland. "The people that lived there could not scare it away, and when the (tribal) officer arrived there, he could not scare it away either."

State laws that protect mountain lions do not apply on a reservation, but the tribal officer, Philip Ginn, contacted Fish and Game "as a matter of courtesy," Boesel said, before shooting the cat.

"The cat would pace back and forth and then crouch and stare intently at the people," Boesel continued. "He did that repeatedly, so the officer went to the truck to get his rifle, and when he came back the cat was still there and would not go away."

Since the cat's actions represented a significant public safety threat to the residents, Ginn shot it. "They had no other choice," Boesel said.

After the lion was killed, Boesel said Fish and Game collected the carcass and transported it to a forensic lab in Rancho Cordova, where they will perform a necropsy to see if it was sick.

"It was exhibiting very unusual, bizarre behavior," Boesel said. "It could have been sick, but the cat looked in pretty good shape."

"There's kids that run back and forth between our houses," said one of the residents who asked to remain anonymous. "My friend was calling her cats when we heard the boom. That's when he shot it. We have a little one-and-a-half-year-old, and Mr. Ginn said it could have taken her away."

Though this less serious incident coincidentally occurred the same night as the Orange County attack, it's no surprise to those who are knowledgeable about Mendocino County's reputation as a "lion county."

"Mendocino County is the number one county for lion problems with humans in the state," said Robert Timm, superintendent of the University of California Hopland Field Station. "Of all the counties in the state, the most lion complaints come from our county, and the most depredation permits for taking down problem lions are issued here. This is where it's at."

In fact, no county even comes close to the 629 mountain lion depredation permits issued by Mendocino County between 1972 and 2002. The next closest is El Dorado County with 349. Orange County had 15.

Of those permits, 211 lions were actually killed in Mendocino County for that period. The next closest county was Siskiyou County, tallying 94 kills. The total number of lions killed in the state for this time period was 1,405.

"The woods are full of them," said Timm, who himself had an interesting encounter at a house he previously lived at north of Hopland.

"I was sitting on the porch at about 8 in the evening, about to go down to the garden," Timm said, "and a lion walked down the driveway. I'm not sure who was the more surprised. The lion just acted like it owned the place. I threw a few rocks at it, and it loped down the driveway and left."

Timm said he "kept looking over my shoulder a lot" after that.

While the statistics for Mendocino County are a bit surprising, considering there are so many other "rugged" counties in the state, Craig Coolahan, the state director for Wildlife Services, an agency within the USDA, said the "countryside of Mendocino is certainly conducive to supporting large numbers of lions."

Coolahan, who used to live in Mendocino County, has firsthand experience with tracking down problem lions.

"When we're looking for a lion that has killed livestock, we go to the dead livestock because a lot of times the lion returns to the carcass, and often it's covered up with debris," Coolahan said, adding that bloodhounds are used to track the lion from the site of the carcass until it is "treed."

[BobR]

Bobcat, I know the other thread is still there, but you cannot post there.
Bob

[Bobcat]

I think you can now......it was a glitch in the board......

Sorry 'bout that........