Mountain lion prowls Atwater. Why it’s not an unheard-of occurrence in the Central Valley
Reports of a mountain lion wandering around a high school campus in Merced County prompted warnings to nearby residents to stay indoors and keep an eye on children and pets for a couple of hours Saturday before police issued an all-clear notice.
The Atwater Police Department and Merced County Office of Emergency Services sent out notices about 7:45 a.m. Saturday after confirming sightings of the large cougar on the Atwater High School grounds in the northwestern part of the city. Photos of the big cat circulated on social media including Facebook and Twitter, eliciting surprised responses from readers.
Atwater resident Ryan Cook posted an image to Facebook as the animal roamed the high school campus. “Mountain Lion on Atwater High School campus!!!,” Cook wrote. “Traffic is held up, waiting on fish and game. Absolutely insane.”
Cougar spotted a second time
Ken Paglia, a spokesperson for the California Department of Fish & Wildlife, told The Fresno Bee that one of the agency’s officers got a call and responded to the high school before 7 a.m., and personally saw the mountain lion. After police and one of the state agency’s environmental scientists arrived, officials searched the campus and reviewed security footage to confirm that the cat had left the campus.
Later in the morning, a second sighting was reported in a nearby residential area, but a search yielded no further sign of the cougar.
Atwater Police Chief Michael Salvador issued an all-clear notice for residents shortly after 9 a.m. after his officers, Fish & Wildiife officers, Merced County sheriff’s deputies and California Highway Patrol officers determined there was no longer a threat to public safety.
Salvador said search teams scoured the high school campus and surrounding neighborhoods without finding the cougar.
“We’ve determined that the cat is nowhere inside the city limits of Atwater at this time,” he told The Fresno Bee. “There is no public safety risk at this time, so we’re issuing an all clear for residents.”
The warnings had urged residents to stay away from the high school and closed streets in the nearby neighborhoods while the search was under way.
Salvador said cougar sightings are an uncommon, but not unheard of, occurrence on the floor of the San Joaquin Valley. Earlier in his law-enforcement career, when he worked for the Sheriff’s Department in neighboring Madera County, “cats would come down from time to time to the Valley floor,” he said. “They’re looking for water and looking for food.”
“Our irrigation canals are running, and we’ve got the Merced River about three or four miles north of us,” Salvador added. “So it’s not out of the question to see these big cats down here in the Valley.”
Foothills and mountains are considered to be prime habitat for mountain lions, according to information from the state Department of Fish & Wildlife.
“Mountain lions are known to inhabit diverse habitats across most of California,” the department reports on its website. “Mountain lions can be found wherever deer are present, since deer are a mountain lion’s primary food source in most areas.”
Neighborhoods often divide habitats
Paglia, the Fish & Wildlife spokesperson, said that in many instances mountain lions that are seen in residential areas are dispersed young males that have been driven from their mother’s care to fend for themselves. He added that it’s not clear if this was the case for this specimen.
“Mountain lions have large ranges, and their habitat is broken up by residential areas,” he said. “They’ll travel from patches of suitable habitat to other patches of habitat that happen to be separated by residential areas. … It’s not too terribly surprising for one to be spotted in a community.”
Typically, cougars want to avoid humans, “but sometimes they lose their way and end up in residential areas,” Paglia added. “It’s a reminder that mountain lions are out there, and that other wildlife, like coyotes, are out there, too.”
Recent incidents show risk, but attacks on people rare
The agency said that attacks on humans by mountain lions are rare in California. “Statistically speaking, a person is one thousand times more likely to be struck by lightning than attacked by a mountain lion,” the agency’s website states.
In May, a woman reported that she and her dog were attacked by a cougar in a remote area of Trinity County, in Northern California.
And in February, in the Fresno County community of Selma, a 130-pound mountain lion was spotted roaming through a neighborhood in the southeast area of the city. It was later tranquilized and captured outside of a home, then relocated back to the wild.
This story was originally published August 20, 2022 at 9:08 AM.
