[Megan]

List of Mountain Lion Attacks On People in California

This most recent attack I spoke of in my last post is already listed on the above site in detail.

As you can see, since cougars have been protected, the number in incidents and attacks has gone way up.


From this site are links to:

List of Mountain Lion Encounters With People in California

List of Mountain Lion Attacks On People in the U.S. and Canada not including California

Mountain Lion Attacks On People in the U.S. and Canada

Cougar attack lawsuit dropped

35-year-old Mark Reynolds was attacked and half-eaten by a mountain lion, while he crouched to fix his bicycle along Cactus Ridge Trail on January 8, 2004. The same day, the same cougar attacked Anne Hjelle, who was rescued.

Reynolds's family sued Orange County, California, but dropped the suit in the face of pressure from Reynolds's fellow cyclists, who were worried that the lawsuit would provoke the county into prohibiting wilderness cycling.

Wildlife officials destroyed the cougar responsible for the attacks, but California law otherwise prohibits hunting or killing mountain lions.

Overlawyered: Cougar attack lawsuit dropped

Cougar Attacks

It seems that the number of humans attacked by cougars has been on the rise since 1980, and David Baron, author of "The Beast in the Garden", has a provocative theory to account for this:

"We are seeing a fundamental shift in mountain lion behavior," Baron said in an interview last week. "What I would say is, what we're seeing now is unnatural compared to how lions behaved for probably the last 10,000 years." ...

One of Baron's more sobering and compelling observations, at least for me, is that lions are beginning to treat humans like prey - stalking them, ambushing them and dragging them off to be consumed in the same way they would treat a deer. I find this persuasive evidence of behavioral change.

The actual number of cougar attacks on humans and their domesticated animals has hardly reached epidemic proportions. But the upward trend is disturbing, and we're likely to hear about cougars attacking humans more and more often. If you think about it - more deer living closer to humans, and more cougars familiarizing themselves with harmless humans - it makes sense.

Animal Crackers: Cougar Attacks