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CNN Saturday Morning News

Mountain Lion Ventures Into Residential Area Near L.A.

Aired May 25, 2002 - 08:19   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Some tense moments in Monrovia, California yesterday. A mountain lion ventured a little too far and ended up in a residential area near Los Angeles.

Stacy Tobin of California affiliate KCBS has the story and the controversy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STACY TOBIN, KCBS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): You're looking at home video of a female mountain lion who made her way into the Grimard family's backyard just before dawn.

CELESTE GRIMARD, HOMEOWNER: We both woke up to it and we thought, you know, what's the noise?

TOBIN: That noise was this big cat, who decided to park it in the middle of a bamboo shrouded fence that separates her yard from her neighbor's.

GRIMARD: It was growling at my dog. I mean you could hear it. When I was calling the police you heard their grrrrr.

TOBIN: Grrrrr because of the precarious position she got herself into after pawing her way next to the family home.

(on camera): The lion first jumped over this wrought iron gate and then prowled around the backyard a bit. Then he hopped this six foot wooden fence, fell through the thick bamboo and got his head stuck right in that hole. (voice-over): Wildlife experts were summoned and with tranquilizer guns drawn, they headed in.

(on camera): Were you afraid?

JOANNE MONTGOMERY, NEIGHBOR: No, I wasn't frightened.

TOBIN: A big mountain lion back there?

MONTGOMERY: Well, I was inside.

TOBIN (voice-over): Neighbors watched and waited until they heard a shot. With children in the area, animal control officers felt it necessary to kill the cat. LT. ANGEL RATON, DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND GAME: We were not able to take a shot with a tranquilizer shot because all we got was a head shot and the drug did not work on the head. It has to be muscle.

TOBIN: An unfortunate ending for an animal who just wandered off.

In Monrovia, Stacy Tobin, CBS-2 News.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Well, some animal rights activists say officials went too far yesterday when they shot and killed that mountain lion. But officials say they had no other choice.

Here's a quote: "A warden has to make the determination on scene if the animal poses a public threat. It's a judgment call based on the totality of the circumstance. The warden felt that even if the animal had successfully been tranquilized, meaning it was hit by the dart, the animal posed a threat to the urban area because of the unpredictable outcome. In nearly every instance, we are reluctant to take an animal's life."

Joining me now to talk about this is Dr. Michael Fox.

Dr. Fox, first, your reaction to that statement.

DR. MICHAEL FOX, VETERINARIAN: Well, I think it's pathetic and the California Fish and Game Department does not have the best reputation for animal control, whether, in fact, these people are professionally trained in animal control. There are more ways of catching a mountain lion than with a tranquilizer dart gun.

PHILLIPS: And what are those ways, doctor?

FOX: There are catch poles. There are nets. In India, where I work with my wife in the south, we deal with dangerous animals using throw nets. And it's a much more effective way. And certainly from the video that I've seen of this unfortunate mountain lion, I think a frontal approach that they felt was the only way of approaching, they could have gone behind the animal. If it was actually caught in the fence they could have put a catch pole on.

So I think this is a call that was made in the usual kind of reflex way. This is a dangerous animal, therefore we will eliminate it.

PHILLIPS: Let's talk about how dangerous the mountain lion is. Let's talk about the demeanor and the habitat.

FOX: Well, there has been a lot of encroachment into the, this particular predator's dwindling habitat in California and increasing disruption of its own environment, which is the source of its food. So they tend to prey on livestock and part of the Fish and Game Department's job, especially in California, is to eliminate predators like that -- it's kind of a subsidy to the livestock industry -- that should be moved out of wildlife areas. We need more protected areas for these kinds of animals, that are part of our national heritage, after all.

PHILLIPS: Isn't it safer, though, to kill a mountain lion in this case? We're talking right in the backyard of a family. Who knows if they had kids? If they even knew the mountain lion was there? The kids could come running out into the yard. I mean you never know what's going to happen and, of course, I would think police and other safety experts would say look, we can't take a risk. We can't afford to lose human life.

FOX: I think in a community like that the area could be very quickly cordoned off and with a good team of trained animal control experts, not reflex killers from the Fish and Game or the police, that animal could have very easily been contained. If it had been a very rare valuable species from a zoo that had escaped, I'm sure much greater effort would have been made to save it, for example, if it was a snowy leopard.

PHILLIPS: Tell us about the snowy leopard. What do you mean by that?

FOX: There are endangered species unlike the snow leopard from the Himalayas that are extremely rare now and every effort would be made to save an animal like that, that might have escaped into a suburban area.

The fact that the animal was there in that area from, and was spotted at 4:30 in the morning, and the Fish and Game and the police took several hours, according to newspaper reports, before they decided that the final solution was to kill it, what did they do during those several hours when there were no children around?

The whole scenario has been repeated many times and we need a whole different approach by the authorities to animals who find themselves in the wrong place like this. Occasionally -- I live in the Washington, D.C. area -- there are brown bears who come within the so-called beltway. And a fairly common response by the authorities is to shoot.

We need to find more enlightened and more humane ways of dealing with these animals who, shall we say, get off the reservation.

PHILLIPS: Dr. Michael Fox, veterinarian, also with the Humane Society in the United States, thank you very much for being with us.

And once again we want to make sure that we make it clear we did give the statement by the warden, saying that a determination on scene was made that the animal was posing a public threat and therefore they had to take its life.

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