SAN DIEGO — A Ring security camera captured images of a mountain lion scaling a fence and strolling through the backyard of a home in Rancho Sante Fe.
“It’s always alarming when you see a mountain lion in your backyard,” said Tim Daly with California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
It happened a week ago during the overnight hours shortly after 1:00 a.m. Daly told CBS 8 there is plenty of suitable habitat in the area, and in fact, half of the State of California is considered mountain lion habitat.
“As I look at a map of the Rancho Santa Fe area, there’s really good habitat just to the north," said Daly. "Mountain lion sightings might be more unusual in the San Diego region than in other parts of the state, but certainly not unexpected.”
After watching the video, Daly surmised the mountain lion in question looks like an adult. He said the animals can have a home range of up to 100 square miles, covering a lot of territory in a short amount of time.
"If we’re close to what’s considered mountain lion habitat, it’s entirely possible they’ll find a way into one of our neighborhoods, look things over, and hopefully go back to that habitat,” said Daly.
The sighting came just days after another mountain lion was spotted in the backyard of a home in La Mesa. And two weeks before that, a mountain lion believed to be a juvenile was caught on camera walking past the front porch of a home in Mira Mesa.
In March, there were multiple reports of sightings of a mountain lion in Oceanside as it roamed through parking garages and outside the Regal Cinemas theater, much of it captured on surveillance video.
Daly told CBS 8 they’ve seen an increase in the number of reported sightings in recent years, but said that doesn’t necessarily mean there are more mountain lions around than in years past.
“It’s entirely possible that between the pandemic when more people were spending more time at home and between the popularity of security cameras at home and in backyards, it’s a very strong possibility that’s why we’re sensing more sightings in the San Diego region as well,” said Daly.
He outlined a few tips to make our yards less attractive to wildlife such as mountain lions, telling CBS 8 it’s important to clean up grills after a barbecue, to secure trash cans, and to bring in small pets at night as well as their pet food.
“We need to just do as good a job as we can securing our backyards, and hopefully your neighbors are doing the same, so that a mountain lion, if it’s coming into the area, it just passes through and keeps on going back to the habitat where it came from,” said Daly.
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