Mountain lion caught on video in East Sonora
Home security camera captures big cat in Mono Village neighborhood
A mountain lion appeared on home security video Friday morning outside a residence in East Sonora, and the woman who spotted it warned people in her neighborhood and elsewhere in the Sierra Nevada foothills.
“It’s concerning to see it and see how comfortable it looks,” Shanna Relei, 29, a resident of Stone Lane for the past four or five years, said Monday in a phone interview. “Like this is his neighborhood, not my neighborhood.”
Relei said she got a notification from her Ring camera system at 6:52 a.m. Friday, but she didn’t bother to check it out right away because she gets so many false alarms. She lives in or near the Hillsdale subdivision and she said she often gets security camera alerts about feral cats and other things that trip her camera sensor alarms.
A few minutes later, she went out walking her dog and figured if the camera alert was a feral cat, her dog would scare the cat away. She went outside in her slippers with no cell phone on her. Her dog didn’t react to any new smells, so she figured the alert she got earlier was another false alarm.
Then about 8 a.m. Friday, she checked her camera notifications and saw it was a real mountain lion.
“I watched it three times before it hit me: That’s a mountain lion,” she said. “At first, I thought from the size of it, it was a full grown dog, but looking at it you can see it’s a mountain lion.”
She reported it to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which confirmed her video showed a real mountain lion.
“What was even more troubling was my dog didn’t notice or react to any new smells,” Relei said. “That tells me the mountain lion has been around here and my dog is used to that smell now.”
Relei said she wants her neighbors to know the mountain lion was recorded on her security camera. She said she was born and raised in Tuolumne County, her family goes back eight generations, and she’s no stranger to how common mountain lions are here in the foothills.
“This is troubling because it’s a residential area we live in,” Relei said. “It’s not up the hill or out in open fields in Jamestown. This is a highlypopulated area. I’m concerned about our animals and my neighbor’s animals, and young children who play outside unsupervised. That morning there were some elementary-aged kids waiting at the bus stop a couple houses down from me, a few hundred feet.”
Relei said she is an expectant mother and first called Tuolumne County Animal Control, who told her to call state Fish and Wildlife. She said she spoke to a biologist, who
told her Fish and Wildlife would not respond unless the mountain lion threatens or kills pets and livestock. Relei said that reminded her that recently some feral cats in her neighborhood have disappeared, and that a neighbor recently found some dead chickens. She previously thought a raccoon was doing the damage, but now she believes it might be a mountain lion.
Biologists and other scientists say mountain lions are common in the Mother Lode foothills and mountain forests because one of their primary food sources is deer. There are a lot of deer here in the Central Sierra, deer that grow comfortable in residential settings, feeding off landscaping and manicured lawns, which draws the predatory, meat-eating, carnivorous mountain lions right into the same residential areas.
“Definitely a mountain lion,” Dan Fidler, a state Fish and Wildlife biologist based in Fresno, said Monday upon seeing the video Relei shared. “Pretty common species in the foothills. This subdivision area is smack dab in the middle of open land, with a lot of human-created greenery. You create your own ecosystem. The deer eat well. The predators come to feed on the deer. You bring them down from the hill by tempting the deer.”
Fidler said mountain lions have been common in Tuolumne and Calaveras counties and the rest of the Central Sierra for 10,000 years or longer. What’s different today is that in the past 20 to 30 years, security cameras and game cameras and trail cameras have become more common and more affordable. That means there are a lot more instances where humans get to see what’s walking around their homes in the dusk, at night, and close to sunrise, but it doesn’t mean there are more mountain lions around.
“It’s a good look at what’s walking and running around at night,” Fidler said. “People should know if you’re out at night, it’s mountain lion time. Practice pet safety and livestock safety. The presence of a mountain lion is not always a reason for removal. In a lot of ways, a sighting is a good sign of health. You have a lot of healthy deer, you get healthy mountain lions. If we get reports of a mountain lion getting too comfortable, too familiar, or too aggressive, then maybe we do something about it.”
More than half of California is mountain lion habitat, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Mountain lions generally exist wherever deer are found. They are solitary and elusive. Their nature is to avoid humans.
Mountain lions primarily eat deer. If allowed, they will prey on vulnerable pets and livestock. In extremely rare cases, people have fallen prey to mountain lions, state Fish and Wildlife staff say on a “Keep Me Wild: California Mountain Lions” page.
Mountain lion attacks on humans are rare, but they are possible. Biologists with the National Park Service advise people who live and play in the Central Sierra to realize they are in mountain lion habitat and to act accordingly.
Don’t go walking alone, especially at sundown, after dark, or before sunrise. Walk in groups with adults watching children. Keep children close to you.
If you see a mountain lion, stay calm. Hold your ground or back away slowly. Face the lion and stand upright. Do not approach a mountain lion, especially one that is feeding or with kittens.
Most mountain lions will try to avoid a confrontation. Give them a way to escape.
Do not run from a lion. Running away might stimulate the mountain lion’s instinct to chase. Instead, stand and face the animal. Make eye contact. If you have small children with you, pick them up, if possible, so they don’t panic and run. Do not crouch down or bend over.
If the mountain lion moves in your direction or acts aggressively, do everything you can to appear intimidating. Raise your arms. Open your jacket and hold out the sides so you look big. Wave your arms slowly and speak firmly in a loud voice.
As a last resort, throw stones or branches in the direction of the mountain lion. If the mountain lion attacks, fight back.
“Research on mountain lion attacks suggests that many potential victims have fought back successfully with rocks, sticks, garden tools, even an ink pen or bare hands,” California Department of Fish and Wildlife staff say. “Try to stay on your feet. If knocked down, try to protect your head and neck.”