Oakdale CA / May 31, 2011 — A mountain lion or cougar was seen Sunday night near Oakdale, the Stanislaus County Farm Bureau reported Tuesday.
The Farm Bureau “received word of the sighting of a cougar or mountain lion near the corner of Pleasant Valley Rd. and Sawyer Ave. Sunday night just as it was getting dark. It came out of the pasture on one side of the road and jumped across into the berry bushes. The Sheriff and Animal Control have been notified, but please beware!,” the bureau wrote in an email alert.
“They make a screaming noise like a woman being attacked,” the bureau added.
Sightings of cougars and mountain lions in the San Joaquin Valley – and elsewhere in California – are not unusual, but killings of the animals is rare, according to the Mountain Lion Foundation.
The year 2002 represented a high in lion killings, the foundation reports, with two females being killed in Merced County and one in Stanislaus County.?
“The California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) receive hundreds of reports on mountain lion sightings annually,” the foundation reports. “On average, fewer than three percent of these result in a mountain lion being killed under the CDFG’s Wildlife Public Safety Guidelines.
“Seventy-nine percent of all mountain lion related Wildlife Incident Reports are resolved by providing information about the biology and behavior of mountain lions. Another 18 percent of cases are considered by CDFG as legitimate threats posed by mountain lions that can be resolved by modifying human behavior. Listed below is a breakdown of the mountain lions killed by the California Department of Fish and Game for public safety reasons from 1995 through April 2008.”
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