Recently another mountain lion wandered out of the hills into Palo Alto and had to be shot by the police. And then came the ridiculous assertion that comes up every time something like this happens, and it makes me want to scream. Some “authority” on the radio said that mountain lions were coming into cities because we were “encroaching on their territory.”
This shows an astounding ignorance about mountain lions and about development.
First of all, where on the Peninsula has there been any large scale land development at all in the last two decades? Nowhere. It’s all open space or previously developed land. There is no encroachment. Second, people who say this have no understanding of lions. Young males will are programmed to find new territory to avoid competing with more dominant males. If a mountain lion wanders into town, you can bet that it is virtually always a young male. We aren’t encroaching on their territory–the opposite is true. As the mountain lion population grows due to hunting controls, this will inevitably happen more and more. As will attacks on people. I love that we have mountain lions in the hills, but how we live with those lions has to start with a reality-based view of the situation. People have to drop the old myths.