Why the Berkeley Mountain Lion Wasn't Tranquilized
In urban area, police had little choice but to kill animal
Berkeleyside's story about the Gourmet Ghetto mountain lion that was shot and killed at 3:26 a.m. Tuesday on Walnut Street elicited unprecedented interest from readers. Many of the commenters on the story wondered, in particular, why the police officers shot the lion instead of tranquilizing it.
According to Fish and Game Warden Patrick Foy, there are very few instances in which tranquilizers are an option with mountain lions. “When the animals are bounding over fences, as happened in Berkeley, there aren’t many options,” he said. “When you put a dart in the animal, I’ve seen them go a half mile, even a mile or more. They become an even greater threat.”
Foy said that the ideal situation for using tranqulizers is when the mountain lion can be diverted back into the wild. That would apply, for example, if a mountain lion was found near a wilderness area with a clear route back. This would have been impossible in the built-up area of North Berkeley.
Berkeley police don’t carry tranquilizer darts, and they aren’t standard issue for wardens either, Foy said. “We don’t carry tranquilizers drugs in our patrol trucks,” he said. “There are some instances where you have time and you can get the tranquilizers, but that’s not at three in the morning.”
As he told Berkeleyside Tuesday, Foy repeated that the Berkeley police officers had little choice but to kill the animal.
Even when tranquilizers can be used, Foy said, another problem arises: When the animal is taken into a wilderness area, she will likely end up in another lion’s territory. “One of those animals will probably be killed,” he said.
Foy also confirmed the speculations of a number of commenters on Berkeleyside. “The best way to find a mountain lion is to find its favorite source of food, which is deer,” he said. The Berkeley hills have a very healthy deer population.
The Department of Fish and Game maintains a website, Keep Me Wild, which has information about mountain lions and other wild fauna in California. The population of mountain lions in Northern California is healthy, according to Foy.
If you encounter a mountain lion, Keep Me Wild advises: “Do not run; instead, face the animal, make noise and try to look bigger by waving your arms; throw rocks or other objects. Pick up small children.”
Jonathan Weber
I lived in Montana for 8 years and as you might imagine there are often issues there with wildlife/ people conflicts and how to manage them. There is no issue here - a very dangerous, elusive predator, and not an endangered one at that, wandering a residential neighborhood in the middle of the night. The Berkeley police did what any knowledgeable and reasonable responder would do in that situation. In Montana someone probably would have shot it before the police got there, there would have been an investigation but the outcome would be clear: if there is a mountain lion in a dense residential neighborhood, you do what you have to do in the face of a very clear threat. It's unfortunate, they are beautiful animals, but their regular diet is mid-size mammals and they will, literally, eat your children if given the chance.
Eric Brooks
What absolute crap.
I grew up in the mountains, and the lame brain idea that a mountain lion has to be shot when it is among people is nonsense; especially at 3 frigging o'clock in the morning when almost -no one- is out and about. Female mountain lions are most dangerous when their cubs are nearby, not when they are hunting in an area foreign to them, where they can be challenged and scared away.
Both the Oakland and San Francisco zoos have tranquillizer guns ready on a moment's notice, and they could have been called in.
The stupid redneck testosterone drenched ethic of Fish and Game is to kill, shoot and poison first, and employ common sense later or never.
They've also been known to poison entire waterways killing everything in them just to get rid of one predator fish or mollusk.
What utter nonsense.
We, humans, are responsible for massively destroying the habitats of these animals to the extent that they are more and more driven into human territory. Until we restore those habitats it is our -responsibility- to take a little risk now and then to return them to more wild areas without a knee-jerk kill-first reaction.
The shooting of that mountain lion (and inevitable starving of its cubs, wherever they are) was moronic.
R T
Eric-
Yes SF Zoo and Oakland Zoo have tranq guns ready- the only problem being they are at the ZOO- not in Berkeley. In the hour or so it would likely have taken to get the tranq gun out there and used, the Lion could have seriously injured someone or killed someone, or worse, gotten away and come back later and done the same thing. And even it it got darted- no guarantee it would have worked quickly without someone else getting hurt. One more thing- if the cat got darted as you wished- what do you think they would have done with it- sent it back to the cave to wake up with the kittens???? It would have been transported away and any kits would still-unfortunately perish. Sad but true. Try reading the article and using some critical thinking skills next time.
Jonathan Weber
Common sense would be, when a dangerous predator is near people, you do what you can so that it doesn't kill or maim someone. *Sometimes* a mountain lion can be challenged and scared off. Sometimes not.
Eric Brooks
I'm not denying at all that there is some risk with waiting for a tranquilizer team.
But the risk would have been very small, and we needed to take that risk because we are responsible for the problem and for stewardship of the environment that we are screwing up.
After being tranquilized a mountain lion can be tagged and have a homing beacon/collar attached to allow careful tracking its movements; enabling us to get the heads up if it returns to an urban area.
This tracking would also lead us to the cubs, and then the entire family could be transported to a safer location.
This kind of work is routinely done with bears (which are -far- more dangerous) and the only bears that are killed are the ones which repeatedly return to human habitats even after distant evacuations, proving that they are an ongoing threat.
All of these are the responsible steps that should have been taken with the cougar.