Three mountain lions appeared on a resident’s security camera video late Aug. 14 or early Aug. 15, and he posted it to a Tuolumne County social media group in an effort to warn his neighbors.
“We put up a security camera a few months ago,” Tre Santos, 42, a resident of Rawhide Road for a year and a half, said in a phone interview Thursday. “We see deer on camera almost every night, a deer or two. Then a mountain lion appeared on camera Saturday night (August 13). My wife looked and said ‘that’s not a deer’. This was the first time we saw a lion on camera. Still, we thought a lion, that’s the lowlands, that’s to be expected.”
Santos, his wife and their 3-year-old child moved to Rawhide Road from an urban area where they never saw mountain lions. Living on Rawhide Road for 18 months, they became more familiar with wildlife and came to understand that the deer’s habitat is the mountain lion’s habitat.
Then, on the morning of Aug. 15, they looked at the security camera video and saw “three of them walking around at once,” Santos said, adding, “Yeah, that’s alarming.”
Santos said he called the Fresno office of the state Fish and Wildlife department that morning and spoke with an employee, who told him that if he had seen three mountain lions at once, he should talk to someone else with the state Fish and Wildlife .
Santos said he gave his phone number to the state Fish and Wildlife worker in Fresno and waited for a call. Santos said he missed a call from what appeared to be a Fresno number on Wednesday. He wasn’t sure who it was and said he would call later on Thursday.
Santos said of the mountain lions that roam the fenced and unfenced lands near Rawhide Road, “They may have been here all along and we’re now seeing it for ourselves. We have no goats, sheep or other livestock, so we are not worried. Well, my wife is worried. We have a 3-year-old child.”
Mark Abraham, a state Fish and Wildlife biologist who covers eastern Stanislaus, northern Mariposa and Tuolumne counties, said Thursday he called someone about a report of three mountain lions earlier this week, left a voicemail and did not had heard more.
Abraham said he wasn’t sure how many mountain lion reports Tuolumne State Fish and Wildlife has received so far this calendar year.
Sightings of mountain lions on and near Rawhide Road and in the city of Sonora are nothing new. Wildlife experts say almost anywhere in Tuolumne County is good habitat for mountain lions.
In March 2021, Sonora Police issued an alert for several sightings of mountain lions within the three-square-mile city limits, including an afternoon sighting near the Alpine Lane trail that leads to the popular Dragoon Gulch, where people hike alone, hike with their dogs, bring their kids and ride bikes almost every day of the year.
In January of this year, Sonora city officials again warned the public about a mountain lion seen at night near Dragoon Gulch Trail, captured on surveillance video by a nearby resident. Kim Campbell, a community development specialist for the city, said the video came from a residence just above the Alpine Lane parking lot.
In May of this year, some residents in the Peppermint Creek area near Rawhide Road feared that recent mountain lion sightings and fatal attacks on pets and small livestock were linked to an aggressive mountain lion.
A mountain lion, pit bull or other predatory animal attacked and injured two rams weighing about 200 pounds each on the property of Randy Hass, 63, a resident of Peppermint Falls Road off Rawhide Road for more than 20 years. George Harse, a Fresno-based state Fish and Wildlife human-wildlife conflict resolution specialist and scientist, granted Hasse a non-lethal permit making it legal for Hasse to scare away the mountain lion with firearm if he spotted it.
Harse said Thursday people living in Tuolumne County just have to accept that they live in mountain lion country.
“We’re on a mountain lion highway because the deer migration routes go through that area,” Harse said, speaking by phone from Madera County, where he was helping capture a 200-pound nuisance black bear near the lake. Bass and re- releasing it in the nearest suitable habitat.
“We get a lot of calls from people asking us to relocate mountain lions,” Harse said. “This is not possible. This is not a service we provide. We live in their habitat.”
Santos said Thursday that he’s ultimately waiting to see what, if anything, happens with state Fish and Wildlife.
“I don’t expect anything from any government agency,” Santos said. He said he posted the video of the three mountain lions on social media because “I wanted to share information with the community.”
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife says mountain lions typically pose little threat to humans and generally avoid any human interaction. A person is a thousand times more likely to be struck by lightning than to be attacked by a mountain lion.
According to the department, people who live in mountain lion habitat can take steps to reduce the risks of encountering mountain lions:
• Deer-proof your property to avoid attracting the lion’s main food source.
• Remove dense vegetation around the house to reduce hiding spaces.
• Install outdoor lighting to make it difficult for mountain lions to approach invisibly.
• Secure livestock and large pets outdoors in strong, covered shelters at night.
• Always remember – mountain lions are wild animals and their behavior can be unpredictable – like any wild animal.
The department also provided the following advice on how to avoid encounters with mountain lions and what to do in the rare event that one does occur:
• Do not walk, cycle or run alone. Do not walk, bike or run at dawn, dusk or night.
• Stay alert on the trails. Carefully supervise young children and unrelated pets.
• Never approach a mountain lion. Give them an escape route.
• Do not run. Still. Don’t turn your back. Face the animal, make noise and try to look bigger.
• Do not bend or stoop.
