Mountain Lions in Orange County

30Jul07 | 0 comments

I was training for a marathon a few years ago. So I spent a lot of time running alone on the biketrail that runs through aliso and wood canyon wilderness park. Sometime all the way to Cooks corner and sometimes deep into the canyon and back.

One day I went for a run to Aliso Creek golf course. As I came back out of the main area and turned to get on to the biketrail, I noticed a hand written note tacked to the trail sign: "mountain lion sighting". It had a date of that day and a time of two hours before I went into the canyon.

That was a bit of a wake up call. After that, I never ran alone on the trail. (The fact that there were two attempted assualts/rapes on the trail near park avenue in Aliso Viejo in Nov/Dec of 2005 only reinforced that decision.)

Now, I believed the sighting was nothing more than one of the bobcats that frequented the area. After about ten years of no confirmed sightings and no real wildlife corridor, I'm very skeptical of mountain lions in the area. Plus, the two Orange County Parks, Laguna Coast Wilderness and Aliso and Wood canyon wilderness are quite small relative to the habitat needs of a mountain lion. How big of a deer population can they support? One that can feed a solitary mountain lion 50 deer a year? I don't know the answer but I have my doubts. Still, I am a mother, and I can't afford to be so carefree with my life, so I have to respect the possibility.

Yesterday, we hiked through Caspers Wilderness park. I was again nervous after seeing the posting about a mountain lion sighting in the park in the last few days. I believe it said the sighting was on July 26th.

Today, doing a little mountain lion research, I stumbled on the story in the OC Register dated July 26th, the same day:

oc register

Mountain Lion Picture

Then on Saturday someone in Coto De Caza snaped a pic of another moutain lion in the area.

Coto De Caza is just a hop skip and a jump from Caspers. They believe there is another cougar in the area along with a mom with cubs so that may not be the one that was sighted in the park.

I found the behavior interesting and scary. Are mountain lions becoming habituated to humans? Why didn't it flee? And then of course I wonder why they didn't expect this. They build golf courses and elementary schools bordering mountain lion territory and they expect mountain lions to obey some invisible fence?

There was a similar incident in Rancho Santa Margarita in January of 2006. Someone woke up and saw a mountain lion sitting on the wall behind their house. The owner of the house shot and wounded it. Later fish and game tracked it down and killed it.

But again all I can do is shake my head. You build a house right smack up against mountain lion territory and you don't expect it? The owner was concerned that there are kids walking to school and there's an elementary school nearby.

I'm sorry but, if I lived next to the wilderness, there would be no way I'd let my kids walk to school alone. Do they think because they killed one mountain lion that now they are safe? Maybe some day, when they kill them all I guess. (From what I have read, there are only 20 or so left and they'll all be gone in a hundred years.)

There's an old saying about going into the wilderness "when you enter the wilderness, you enter the food chain". I think the same goes for building a house next to it.

Of course the building in mountain lion habitat will continue:
Rancho Mission Viejo

"In 1991, we began the process of creating a long-term comprehensive open space protection/management and land use plan for the Ranch. This blueprint for the future became know as The Ranch Plan, a binding document created in partnership with the County of Orange, state and federal wildlife protection agencies, and our neighbors in South Orange County. In November 2004, The Ranch Plan was approved by the Orange County Board of Supervisors with a unanimous vote of support. In August 2005, a settlement was reached with five conservation organizations to increase the protected open space and habitat from 66 percent to almost 75 percent, decrease development area on the Ranch by 25 percent, help ensure the protection of key watersheds and retain our family's cattle ranching and farming operations. And, in 2007, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service added the Ranch's open space to its 32,818-acre Habitat Conservation Plan.

Although additional review and approvals lie ahead before the first homes on the Ranch are available for sale, The Ranch Plan now allows ranching and farming to continue, preserves nearly three-fourths (75%) of Rancho Mission Viejo as natural open space and sensitive habitat, and protects the local quality of life through thoughtful development phased over 20 to 25 years to accommodate and help manage the region's progress."

(Who said they aren't making any more land?)

Back to the pumas. I am, I admit biased towards the mountain lions. I've always been in awe of them and just have felt a strange attraction towards them. I've studied them a great deal in the past. I also followed Paul Beier's study conducted in the late 80's early 90's.

Beier, Paul, and Reginald H. Barrett. The Cougar in the Santa Ana Mountain Range, California. Final report of the Orange County Cooperative Mountain Lion Study, June 1, 1993. Available from the California Department of Fish and Game.

If I remember correctly, it basically states that the 20 or so cougars that live in the mountains are doomed, not just by loss of habitat due to encroachment from humans, but by lack of wildlife corridors.

Although I know they mean southern and northern corridors, I read with great interest the plan to provide a wild life corridor along the great park. If you aren't familiar with the great park, it is in the 'plan' for the old Tustin Marine Corp base.

Orange County Great Park

So now, to bring this post back to where we started, a wildlife corridor will stretch from Whiting Ranch to the Laguna Coast Wilderness. This will allow animals such as coyote, deer and even mountain lions to enter our urban wilderness.

I personally worry that this is bad news for the mountain lions not to mention uninformed homeowners near the corridor and wilderness areas. A mountain lion will undoubtedly come down the corridor in search of prey. And the deer in the area probably don't know what a predator is so they should be easy prey. But so might the children who play along the parks and paths around the area.

If they are going to build that corridor, I believe the government or fish and game needs to literally knock on everyone's door and let them know how it affects their neighborhood. Maybe I just worry too much, but I believe it is only a matter of time before there's a fatal encounter. The strange behavior of the coto de caza mountain lions are a bad omen. People need to have a healthy respect for these animals and nature especially when kids are involved, but, quite frankly, in my experience, they don't.

One thing is for sure, once they open that corridor, we can truly say we live in Cougar country.