A baby mountain lion found a little over a week ago in the middle of a Castaic roadway has been transported to a wildlife rehabilitation center in Northern California after biologists couldn’t locate the mother, according to a California Department of Fish and Wildlife official.
The female cub was being temporarily housed at the Los Angeles Zoo while biologists hoped to gain leads on any sightings of an adult mountain lion, assumed to be the mother, traveling with another cub, Cort Klopping, a Fish and Wildlife spokesperson said Thursday afternoon.
Those efforts included Fish and Wildlife personnel setting up cameras within the area where the cub was first located, and asking Castaic residents to report any possible sightings for leads.
According to Klopping, there were four Wildlife Incident Reports and several additional calls to the department.
But the reported sightings weren’t exactly what Fish and Wildlife personnel were looking for, as many of them were of an adult male mountain lion traveling alone, Klopping said.
“It was determined that it wouldn’t be safe to release this tiny kitten back out. What we really wanted was to reunite it with its mom,” Klopping said.
The cub was transported via air to Northern California on Thursday and will now be housed at the Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue.
The female cub, who was estimated to be 4 to 5 months old and was weighed at a little over 16 pounds, will now live with another mountain lion cub that was rescued from a different part of the state, Klopping said.
This will give both lion cubs the chance to learn from each other, and the socialization and survival skills needed to live in the wild successfully, according to Klopping. The female cub found in Castaic will then be transported back to Southern California once it’s old enough and released back to its natural habitat.
When the mountain lion will be released back into the wild is unknown, as it varies on a case by case basis, but usually they must be 10 to 11 months old and a minimum of 50 pounds, he added.
Although the reunification efforts did not turn out to what Fish and Wildlife personnel had hoped, Klopping wanted to acknowledge the community for assisting with the efforts. “It makes such a difference. This time the reports didn’t pan out,but it showed that the community there has such a warm heart for wildlife and it seemed like a lot of people got behind this effort to try to reunite the kitten with its mom,” he said.
The cub was first spotted in the early hours of Jan. 21 in the middle of traffic lanes on Hillcrest Parkway just east of Olympic Street in Castaic, according to Carlos Burgos- Lopez, a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol Newhall-area Office.
Initial reports indicated that the cub could have possibly been hit by a car, but after she was assessed by veterinarians, no broken bones or significant injuries were found. The cub did have a laceration on its front right paw but was overall in good condition.
The CHP then requested Fish and Wildlife to respond after the cub wandered off at about 2:15 a.m. that same morning. She was found by biologists in thick brush before she was taken to a local vet to be evaluated.
Klopping thanked community partnerships for the effort, including the L.A. Zoo for housing the cub and Flying Tails Animal Rescue, a nonprofit organization, for transporting the mountain lion to the rehabilitation center.
