Cameras catching mountain lion activity in Santa Cruz County
Several mountain lion sightings in Santa Cruz County has wildlife experts warning residents and pet owners.
The fact that Santa Cruz County is mountain lion territory has been highlighted this week after several pictures and videos have surfaced.
“The wildness is one of the best attributes of Santa Cruz County, and the mountain lion is the wildest animal we have,” says Stephen Slade with the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County.
Early Wednesday morning one video was posted on Facebook showing a mountain lion carrying some sort of prey in it’s mouth. A reminder for people with animals to keep their pets inside when the sun goes down.
Slade says, “the prime hunting time for lions is just before sunset just after dawn, if you got animals you need to pin them up at night and make them safe, because the lions are going to be out at night.”
Bonny Doon resident Samantha Amos says she unfortunately knows this from experience, “”my chicken’s got attacked before in the night, so one thing that we do is we have a spotlight so when the motion senses by it it will turn on so that’s kind of been deterring them from coming around and we haven’t had any issues since.”
With recent social media postings experts say it may seem like there are more of the big cats around, but the population has stayed steady the past few years. They attribute that to more people buying home surveillance cameras and being able to see the wildlife that has been there for years.
Santa Cruz County resident Debra Macdonald says her family knew what they signed up for when they moved here more than 20 years ago, “we live in their area. I would love to see a Mountain Lion close- up I think they’re beautiful and we just have to learn to live with them.”
Spotting a mountain lion in person is very rare. Slade says if you do see one do not run, “”bulk up, stand straight, and use a firm loud voice, basically you’re just letting them know I’m not dinner, i will fight back. They don’t want to fight, that’s a general characteristic of all the feline breeds. They are solitary animals if they get injured, they have problems hunting so they don’t want to get injured.”
Also in the worst case scenario if you do get attacked, fight back.
