A 7-month-old mountain lion, who spent several hours lounging on a tree in a suburban Valencia neighborhood on Friday, safely made its way home with the assistance of Department of Fish and Wildlife officials that same night, a spokesperson said.
The cub came down from the tree on its own late Friday night and environmental scientists and a warden followed it as it returned into the wild, said Fish and Wildlife spokesman Steve Gonzalez in a phone call with The Signal on Saturday afternoon.
It’s unclear how the cub ended up in the neighborhood, but mountain lions typically require about 200 square miles to roam, Gonzalez said. With the large amount of wildlife in the Santa Clarita Valley, it creates a good habitat for the animals, he added.
“Wherever you’ll find deer, you’ll find mountain lions,” he said, and scientists believe the cub came into the area with its mom. Mountain lion cubs typically become fully independent at around 1 year old, which means the one perched in the tree was likely still too young to take care of itself, Gonzalez added.
“Sometimes this happens, if they came into town together, maybe the mom left it up in a safe location,” as she went looking for food and that’s how they separated, he said.
Gonzalez wanted to reassure the public that although the cat may be young, the large animals have a great sense of smell and know the area they roam really well.
“They have ways of finding each other, they have a sense of smell, of where mom is. So hopefully when it wandered back into the wild it was able to find the mother,” Gonzalez said, but “at this point, all we can confirm is that it made its way out of town and back into its natural habitat.”
