Mountain lions roam domestic areas
The mountain lion is becoming a pest.
Over the past month, mountain lions have threatened people in suburban Los Angeles, mauled house pets in the Colorado foothills, sauntered through backyards in Boise and ravaged a recently transplanted bighorn sheep population outside Tucson.
Last week in Montana, the Missoula school system asked parents to accompany kids to bus stops a day after a mountain lion roamed through a neighborhood north of town before it was shot and killed. There have been no recent reports of attacks on humans, but Colorado wildlife officials are looking for a mountain lion that has terrorized house pets in Coal Creek Canyon, 35 miles west of Denver, killing at least eight dogs. Separate warnings were issued for the Breckenridge ski area last month. At least a dozen dogs and house cats have disappeared in the past few weeks in Coal Creek Canyon,
Out of 31 bighorn sheep in the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson — part of a state plan to re-establish a herd near the state’s second-largest metropolitan area — a third may have been killed by mountain lions since they were released in November.
Mountain lion experts and state game officials can’t agree on how many roam the USA. Estimates range from 10,000 to 40,000, mostly in Western states but spreading over several Midwestern states.
They are also in Florida, where they have rebounded from near-extinction.
The mountain lion’s normal ranges are shifting, altered by suburban encroachment, drought, a severe winter and recent forest fires, which have altered the size and movement of deer and elk, the cats’ favorite prey.
It isn’t just a Western issue. There’s a database of mountain lion sightings in New York’s Adirondack Mountains.