Hike in groups Avoid hiking alone and always keep children within sight — remember, mountain lions are more likely to grab children first. Write to Mahita Gajanan at mahita. By Mahita Gajanan. Related Stories. Today Is World Elephant Day. Already a print subscriber? Therefore, an easy way to keep lions away is to be sure you are not attracting their natural prey — deer — to your home or garden.
Brush in general is not only a fire hazard, but it can also provide comfortable hiding places for wild animals. So clear bushes from around your home… especially if they are the type deer like to eat, and install proper fencing to keep wildlife out and protect your garden. Raccoons and feral cats are also common lion food, so do what you can to avoid attracting them. Store your pet food in a secure enclosure and whenever possible feed your animals indoors.
Garbage cans also provide a magnificent party buffet for wild animals… and it may not be long before a lion decides to crash the party and eat the guests. Close the buffet by securing your garbage cans.
Raising livestock is often a messy business. The smell of blood from sick, injured, dead, or newborn animals will attract mountain lions. Clean up the source and place vulnerable animals within a secure enclosure.
See our animal husbandry page for more details on how to protect breeding and injured animals. If the size of your ranching operation does not permit you to follow the previous steps, or if you have implemented them and are still having conflicts, consider researching and investing in some of these additional predator aversion techniques.
If a covered livestock pen is not an option, you may need to build a tall fence. Mountain lions have been known to jump 15 feet vertically. Trained livestock-specific guard dogs are also said to scare off mountain lions. Timed or motion sensor alarms with flashing lights, loud noises and sprinklers may work on mountain lions, and can also provide an added bonus of scaring other pesky neighbors who show up uninvited.
After following these simple steps, please let your neighbors know the value of taking the same precautions. While you may understand how to live peacefully with the local wildlife, your neighbors may not. Their appeal to a government agency may result in the death of a mountain lion. Often neighbors call in the authorities thinking that they are simply making a report, and without understanding the likely consequences.
Please think your actions all the way through and do what is best for your community. Help your neighbors by referring them to our website or by printing and distributing some of the brochures listed below.
Mountain lions occur most anywhere you can find their primary prey, which is deer. As you likely know, deer not only live in remote forests, but also in green belts, parkways and riparian corridors along rivers.
As such, mountain lion sightings in these areas are not uncommon, and DFG receives numerous reports of lions in these settings every month. Mountain lions are considered beneficial in these settings as they maintain healthy deer herds by keeping their populations in check. DFG has scientific evidence that mountain lions inhabiting areas close to humans are no real cause for concern.
We have either conducted or been associated with mountain lion studies that have monitored their movements in such areas.
We typically capture mountain lions and place a radio collar on them in order to track their movements. The information gleaned from these collars has provided some illuminating results. They have indicated that mountain lions regularly use such areas more frequently than we have previously thought, and that these lions generally attempt to stay away from people. For example, in Southern California, university researchers have placed collars on these big cats in a heavily used park.
They also placed trail loggers and remotely triggered cameras along popular trails to estimate human use. During the course of this study, no reports of aggressive lion behaviors were ever reported to the researchers or park personnel. Excerpt from Outdoor Magazine California Dept. Make yourself appear larger by picking up children, leashing pets in, and standing close to other people.
Open your jacket. Raise your arms. Wave your raised arms slowly. Yell, shout, bang your walking stick or water bottle. Make any loud sound that cannot be confused by the lion as the sound of prey. Maintain eye contact. Never run past or away from a mountain lion. Aggressively wave your arms, throw stones or branches, do not turn away. Assess the situation. Consider whether you may be between the lion and its kittens, prey or cache.
Back away slowly to give the mountain lion a path to retreat, never turning your back. Give the lion the time and ability to get away. If attacked, fight back. Protect your neck and throat. People have used rocks, jackets, garden tools, tree branches, walking sticks, fanny packs and even bare hands to turn away mountain lions. Encounters with mountain lions are rare. Mountain lions tend to spend the day in dense cover, and to hunt when deer are active, most often at dawn and dusk.
While these are also the times that people like to take a walk — avoiding the midday sun — we have a responsibility to be sensible when we do so in mountain lion country. The key to safety is to be aware; not afraid.
Lions do not see the same way we do. They look for the shape and movement of their natural prey. Wearing brightly contrasting clothing can help a lion distinguish you from its natural prey. Although lions do not see colors as we do, dark, midtone or drab woodsy colors will make you look more like a deer.
Always be very alert when crouching or bending down in mountain lion country. Check the area carefully first, and make some noise. Leaning down or bending over also makes the neck and back of the head vulnerable, and this is where a lion will target an attack.
Be especially concerned if you run across a dead animal in the brush. Steer clear. Lions cache their prey for weeks at a time, and will defend the cache. Once the chase has begun, the lion is no longer able to think rationally or assess whether their target is a deer. Lions can sprint at speeds approaching 45 miles per hour, so outrunning them is unlikely. Even deer can be dangerous.
Although they appear passive, they deserve space and respect. Stillness ought not to be equated with a lack of aggression. Lions are stealthy predators, and they cannot roar as a warning.
It may view you as prey, or as a predator. Lions will not turn their back on you if they view you as dangerous, because they know from their own hunting behavior that predators attack from behind. So a lion not backing down is often a sign that you already have the advantage. Predators, like the mountain lion, cannot afford an injury. If they are hurt they cannot hunt effectively, defend a territory, or seek water and shelter.
When injured, wild animals starve. But a sick or injured animal also may seek out easy prey, and become much less interested in anything that looks like it will fight back. Research has shown that mountain lions go out of their way to avoid other mountain lions, and humans — relying on wariness as their first defense, resorting to fights only when necessary to defend a territory or a litter of kittens. The best way to ensure that both you and the lion may leave safely is for you to back away slowly while continuing to look as big and intimidating as possible, leaving the lion avenues of escape.
It will fight to reach — and protect — either. Most wild animals want to avoid humans. And their fear is healthy and should be encouraged, for their own safety. People survive encounters with mountain lions when they behave aggressively. Not only does being hit by a thrown rock hurt, but it makes it very clear that you are not a deer or coyote.
In one case a 9-year-old boy in El Dorado County frightened a mountain lion away by playing his trumpet. With much of the western United States being mountain lion habitat, many parks have come to expect occasional lion sightings as natural occurrence in wild areas, and will simply take note of your report of seeing a lion. If the lion exhibited aggressive behavior in the encounter, officials may close off the trail temporarily as it may be a mother lion with cubs nearby; or they may choose to investigate why the lion behaved out of character, as it may be diseased or injured.
Making a media event out of a lion encounter often leads to the death of the lion, even when it behaved perfectly naturally, and caused no harm. Some people will rush to the area in hopes of seeing the lion. Others will demand — out of fear — that the danger be eliminated.
So, if you see a lion in the wild, treasure your safety and that of the lion, and be grateful for the rare opportunity. Adult males will measure 6 to 8 feet from nose to tail tip and females 5 to 7 feet. Mountain lion kittens or cubs either term is correct have camouflaging spots and rings around their tails that fade as they mature. Mountain lions used to occupy the entire United States coast-to-coast, but today they are primarily found in 14 western states with a small endangered population in Florida.
Five very small populations have regained an unsteady foothold just east of the Rockies in the s and 90s, but their future is uncertain. They prefer areas with dense undergrowth and cover, and will leave an area if they perceive a threat.
Found in deserts, humid coast forests, arid hillsides, scrub and oak woodlands, lions can live from sea level to snow-covered mountain peaks.
A ten year lifespan is considered old age for a mountain lion in the wild. Lions in captivity have been known to live twice that long. In areas where mountain lions are hunted for sport, only a small percentage make it past five years old. Mountain lions are solitary unless mating or parenting and maintain territories that average square miles in size. Lions mark their territories by clawing trees and urinating on scratch piles of dry leaves, grass or pine needles. They will fight other lions, even to the death, to protect their territory.
A female with kittens will move to a new den site within her territory every few weeks to protect her kittens from predators and male lions. Opportunistic hunters, mountain lions typically hunt alone from dusk to dawn, taking their prey primarily deer from behind.
On average, a lion will kill a deer about once a week. They also dine on coyotes, raccoons, rodents, elk, feral hogs, and even porcupines. They may drag the meal to another area and cover it with dry leaves, grass or pine needles to protect the food from other animals and to reduce spoilage. A mountain lion may return to feed at the site over a period of several days.
To deer, yes! To people, not so much. Human encounters with mountain lions are rare and the risk of an attack is infinitely small. You are more likely to drown in your bathtub, be killed by a pet dog, or hit by lightning. This increase is likely due to a variety of reasons, such as:. People rarely get more than a brief glimpse of a mountain lion in the wild. Lion attacks on people are rare, with fewer than a dozen fatalities in North America in more than years.
Most of the attacks were by young lions, perhaps forced out to hunt on their own and not yet living in established areas. Young lions may key in on easy prey, like pets and small children. No studies have been done to determine what to do if you meet a lion. However, based on observations by people who have come upon lions, some patterns of behavior and response are beginning to emerge. With this in mind, the following suggestions may be helpful.
Remember : Every situation is different with respect to the lion, the terrain, the people, and their activity. Narrated by Mark Johnson. Mark Johnson, an avid hunter, fly-fisherman, and rancher, is also the host for the Colorado Outdoors Podcast. Images and videos used in the series were collected from across the state, from both residents and within the agency.
David Neils of Wild Nature Media wildnaturemedia. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam.
0コメント