Mountain lion attacks: Fact and fiction

Journal Staff WriterTwo mountain lion reports ? one all-too-chillingly true and the other bogus ? are reminding Auburn area residents that they?re in cougar country.In Southern California, one man is dead and a woman bicyclist seriously injured after separate attacks that came late Thursday on a trail in Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park, an area in south Orange County bordered by Cleveland National Forest. Mark Jeffrey Reynolds, 35, of Foothill Ranch was killed by a mountain lion in the same wilderness area where a bicyclist was attacked and dragged by the head from a trail before being rescued, The Associated Press reported. Closer to the foothills, area residents are receiving e-mails falsely claiming that a Weimar man out walking his dog used a pocket knife and a single slice to the throat to kill a 200-pound mountain lion. The story is accompanied with a photo and a bogus contention that the story ran in the Journal this past Monday.This year marks a decade since runner and 40-year-old mother of two Barbara Schoener lost her life in a mountain lion attack while traveling alone on the Ballbearing Trail in the rugged Auburn Lake Recreation Area near El Dorado County?s Auburn Lake Trails.?People should recognize the potential for lions to live adjacent to property in Auburn,? said wildlife biologist Patrick Foy of the state Department of Fish and Game. ?The Sierra Foothills mountain lion population is dense, as populations go. People need to be aware.?Wildlife officials believe there are between 4,000 and 6,000 mountain lions in the state, primarily in the foothills east of Sacramento and along the Coast Range, north of San Francisco.Schoener, a Placerville resident out for a weekend morning run, is now one of three people to have been killed by mountain lions in California over the past decade. Her death in April 1994 was followed in December 1994 by a fatal mountain lion encounter in the Cuyamaca State Park in San Diego County. Iris Kenna, 56, of San Diego was killed by a mountain lion while walking alone along a park road.Doug Updike, a Fish and Game Department biologist, said that, including Thursday?s incident, there have been 13 mountain lion attacks on humans in California over the past 114 years, five of them resulting in fatalities. Fish and Game Department statistics show that two of the six victims ? a 10-year-old boy and 22-year-old woman ? died from rabies after surviving a 1909 attack.On the positive side, Foy said the statistics show that confrontations are rare.?It?s extremely unlikely anyone would ever be attacked by a mountain lion,? Foy said.Mountain lions are generally calm, quiet and elusive. To avoid a confrontation, people shouldn?t travel alone and parents or guardians should directly supervise children. Foy said one of his recommendations is that children be equipped with a whistle on their jacket or sweater pulls.If a confrontation does occur, the Fish and Game Department recommends standing tall. That could mean going as far as raising your jacket over your head to make yourself appear even bigger than you are, Foy said.?You need to make the mountain lion think that you?re a threat to its safety,? he said.If an attack does occur, fight back, he said. In the case of the woman cyclist attacked Thursday, her bicycling partner held on as the cougar tried to drag its victim away by the head. Other cyclists joined in by throwing rocks at the animal until it retreated. It was later shot while it prowled near the male victim, who had been attacked when he stopped to fix a broken bike chain.The bogus e-mail claim, which included an attached photo showing a man holding up the large mountain lion, made its way to Meadow Vista area resident Katherine Palme, who forwarded it to the Journal. She said she wondered who killed the cat and what spurred the attack. She even speculated that the man in the photo appeared to look like a local veterinarian. No story was published in Monday?s Journal and no report other than the e-mail was forwarded to the paper. Placer County Animal Services Program Manager Richard Ward said Thursday that his office handled no reports on a dead cat or requests to pick up a carcass.E-mailed the photo, Foy said the sheer size of the mountain lion is a visual indicator that the e-mail report could be discounted.A record size for a mountain lion in California is about 160 pounds, Foy said. Mountain lions do reach 200 pounds in northern states like Montana and Washington. Another possible origin for the photo is Vancouver Island, off the coast of British Columbia, where the world?s densest lion population is found, he said.?(The size factor) almost guarantees it?s not from California,? Foy said. ?I can absolutely, positively discount this as pure Internet lore.?The Associated Press contributed to this story.