According to the Christian Science Monitor, a janitor found the lion in the courtyard of an office building at 6 am. If you’re not familiar with Santa Monica, it is a densely-populated small city directly between the city of Los Angeles and the ocean. It is a part of Los Angeles County.
It wasn’t immediately known how the cat ended up in the middle of the city. The National Park Service has been monitoring 22 mountain lions with GPS radio-collars more than two miles away in the Santa Monica Mountains.
A typical home range for mountain lions is around 200 square miles for adult males, said the agency that has been conducting a study since 2002 in the Santa Monica Mountains to determine how urbanization is affecting the large cats.
Hundreds of mountain lion sightings are reported every year in California, but attacks on humans are rare. Between 1890 and 2007, there have only been 16 attacks in the state, according to Fish and Game statistics.
What do you think of the euthanasia of this big cat?
Photo: AP/Santa Monica Police Department
That’s fucked up. I just read this story on CNN, and I’d like to know how exactly their containment efforts failed. I understand if dealing with mountain lion’s ins’t on the LAPD & SMPD training list, but take a little responsibility for destroying this animal’s habitat. OK, it got into the city, and yes, it is a threat to public safety, but tranq-ing it once and then not having the forethought that that action is probably going to scare the shit out of it and make it want to run. But hey let’s hit it with water hoses and rubber… Read more »
Pretty much, yeah.