The Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office has rehired veteran fish and game warden Henry Coletto to be its mountain lion expert.
The formerly retired woodsman’s new part-time job is to map lion sightings, investigate unusual ones, get all county agencies to use the same
system of reporting lions and train police and animal control officers around the county how best to deal with the big cats.
Coletto, 61, spent 37 years as a county fish and game warden: 22 of those years with the Parks Department and the last 15 with the Sheriff’s Office.
He took his planned retirement in April 2003. During his long career, he became familiar with the mountain lions – also known as cougars or pumas – that roam the Santa Cruz and Diablo ranges, which frame the county.
With growing suburbs next to wild hills, he says the Santa Clara Valley may be poised for its first lion attack in 95 years. The cats almost always avoid people, but special circumstances – such as a starving or rabid animal or human provocation – could result in an attack.
Panic over cougars only makes things worse, he said, and news media reports often contribute to this. He advises people to keep doing whatever they do, but to be cautious if they see lions.
“The bottom line with these things is you’ve got to keep perspective, Coletto said. “If lions wanted to eat people, they’d be eating people once a week.”
About 20 to 30 mountain lions call Santa Clara County home, according to warden John Nores of the state Department of Fish and Game. Despite public paranoia, however, there has been only one mountain lion attack in this county’s recorded history, when a rabid cat attacked a Sunday school class in 1909. One young student and his teacher, who fought off the beast with a hat pin, later died of rabies.
Coletto said Sheriff Laurie Smith offered him his current job in late April as a six-month renewable contract. He started work in May, around the time Palo Alto police shot and killed a cougar in a neighborhood tree. Many said the officers were too harsh in killing the animal instead of tranquilizing it, and this controversy perhaps galvanized the need for a role like Coletto’s.
Coletto plans to lead training sessions for police, animal control and vector control (disease and nuisance wildlife) officers from around the county. He expects officers from San Mateo and Alameda counties to attend as well.
Coletto said officers facing a mountain lion in a neighborhood setting have three basic options:
– Wait for the cat to run off if a wild area is nearby.
– Tranquilize it to be released later in a wild habitat.
– Kill it.
Each choice has complications, he said. A tranquilizing dart, seen by many as a humane but practical solution, can take 15 to 25 minutes to knock out a lion, during which time the lion can still cause problems.
Deciding what to do is hard, but Coletto wants police officers to know they shouldn’t make the decision alone. They are required to notify the state Fish and Game Department of any mountain lion sighting, and if time permits, a state game warden should take part on the decision of how to handle the animal. Part of his job is to make sure all police officers have access to the phone numbers of who to call if they encounter a lion.
Killing a problem cougar is a different matter for police than killing a nuisance coyote. Since 1990, mountain lions have been protected by law from hunting, and state permits are needed to kill them.
In the Palo Alto case, Coletto said the state warden gave police a green light to handle the situation as they saw fit.
South County has seen its share of mountain lion activity as well. In Morgan Hill on March 9, police shot and killed one of three mountain lion cubs after it became aggressive and tried to enter a house through a sliding glass door. Tranquilizing darts which worked on one of the cubs had no effect on the one police shot. The third cub was killed by a passing vehicle.
Mountain lions are also seen periodically in Gilroy, especially in the southern and western foothills and along Uvas Creek. On Thursday, a woman told police she saw a cougar outside her Larkspur Lane home. In June, an emaciated mountain lion injured a woman in Sequoia National Park, making her the 15th lion attack victim in recorded California history.
Six of those 15 died as a result of the attacks, the most recent in January in Orange County.
Coletto said he is willing to speak to groups about mountain lions and invites anyone who has mountain lion questions to call him at 847-7504.
