Mountain Lion Killed in Santa Monica
Posted by: Loren Coleman on May 22nd, 2012
The Los Angeles Times is reporting late today:
State Fish and Game officers killed a mountain lion Tuesday that had tried to escape from the courtyard of a Santa Monica office building where it had wandered hours earlier.
The officers killed the cat out of concern for public safety, according to KTLA News.
The animal was originally spotted about 6 a.m. on Arizona Avenue in downtown Santa Monica. Officers tried to tranquilize it, but the mountain lion kept trying to jump over a fence.
The animal was believed to be a juvenile female, weighing less than 100 pounds. It had wandered into the courtyard of an office building at 1227 2nd St., startling a janitor, Santa Monica police said.
For a time the animal was contained in the courtyard, and Fish and Game wardens were called. As a precaution, police closed 2nd Street to vehicle and pedestrian traffic between Arizona Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard.
Authorities said it’s not unusual for wild animals such as deer and raccoons to stray into the city from the nearby Santa Monica Mountains. But they said it was the first big cat they had seen in the area.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
That is really messed up. Killing it instead of tranquilizing it and releasing back into the wild. Well that is fish and game for ya..shoot first ask questions later.
But I go SHOPPING there! D:
Why was it necessary to kill this beautiful creature?
fish and game SUCK, the cat should of been tranquilized and released back in the mountains, it’s not the animals fault that us humans keep destroying their natural habitat. the poor thing was probly just hungry, or got confused by all the smells. There was no evidence that she meant any harm to anyone.
Screw public safety. We’re encroaching on their habitat… They should not have killed it. Bunch of scumbags. I am honestly in favor of animals at this point. Humans are basically a virus on the planet.
Yep, I’ve had a bad day and I truly hate people.
I agree guys. But this is a VERY busy part of the city and someone could’ve been seriously injured. Being a California raised person, I can say we as a whole, California, are WAY too whimpy campared to rest of America in regards to wild animals. I do think they should have tranq’d the fellow before killing it.
“The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog” ~ Mark Twain
This is nothing new for the Cal Dept of Fish & Game. Apparently this is how they deal with the few mountain lions that are struggling to survive.
A cougar was shot by CDFG April 25th in my old hometown of Sunland.
As a native Californian I expect better than this.
Sorry people, I don’t like the shooting either, but there are plenty of mountain lions in CA, and people are attacked and killed by them when the animals enter urban environments. In the last 10 years there have been at least four mountain lion attacks and at least one fatal, in neighboring Orange County. In terms of encroaching on their land, Santa Monica is over twenty miles from the nearest habitat, and that’s a National Forest. I don’t think anyone is building condos there.
So that’s four mountain lions attacks, one fatal in 10 years out of a human population of how many million? How many of those attacks were in a driveway or on the front lawn or in a garage?
Does that include the idiot who was hiking near Portola Hills and saw three cubs and bent down to pet one when he was “attacked”.
His quote to KABC TV: “‘I’m doing all right,” he said. “I saw the cubs, but I didn’t see her at first. And I walked and I said, ‘Oh, I want to pet this kitty.’ And here she comes out and … I went to touch the kitty … and she just pawed me … She just clawed me is what she did. In other words, ‘Back away from my kittens.'”
In 2009 alone there were 3 fatalities from dog bites in CA.
I think that anything that makes the world a teeny bit safer for wildlife and a little bit less safe for us is good for the planet.
Me, I’d have let the cat go about its business and people deal with that as well as they could. They were here before we were.
The area in the Santa Monica Mountains is littered with Ranches and estates. It is beautiful.
I played poker with a retired Doctor up there and he claims there are only a few lions left in the Santa Monica Mountains, and some of those are killed from time to time by land owners protecting horses, dogs, and other such domesticated animals living on the properties. Just plain shot or poisoned.
It made me mad and I told him the lions belong in the hills more than he did. When they are all gone, all that will be left is fat, rich, idiots, throughout the canyons, with all their pets and rich idiot crap.
Public Safety is a BS excuse for everything. How many children were killed by lions in the last 100 years, and how many were killed by drunk drivers in the last year? Lions don’t sell drugs, join gangs, murder, rape, or bully. Nope, lions just do what lions do…stay alive by looking for food where they can find it.
Public Safety? This is So Cal, Public Safety is an illusion…we are about due for another riot, earth quake, wild fire, mud slide, along with our regular serial killers and gangs…900,000 gang members and we kill lions in the name of Public Safety?
Public Safety? Tell all the fat idiots to move out of the hills. Public Safety? Tell all the land developers to build their malls and crap out of the canyons.
The cowards at the Dept of Fish and Game should stop protecting the public from stray lions and take their guns to downtown LA and see how much “PUBLIC SAFETY” they can create…more people will have their “PUBLIC SAFETY” threatened in the next hour downtown, than have ever been threatened by Mountain Lions. In downtown LA, the threats to Public Safety shoot back.
I say, let the lions eat the occaisional fat idiot or his donkey, I would rather have lions in the hills than fat idiots. Yeah, I’m pretty fed up with people, I’m rooting for the sharks, lions, bears, and any other hungry critter that can munch on a fat idiot. IN MY OPINION, nature is more valuable than fat idiots.
I was born and raised here in So Cal and we have just too many people now a days. C’mon Mayans, let 2012 thin the herd before all the wild animals are shot for “Public Safety”
I’m not too worried, if the Mayans don’t get the fat idiots, the 900,000 gang members here will get around to it.