First Los Angeles Mountain Lion Attack In 25 Years

LOS ANGELES, CA — Last week's mountain lion incident in Monte Nido is the first of its kind in Los Angeles in 25 years, sparking debate in the community about how increasing interactions with wildlife should be handled and the bravery of the boy's mother.

The mountain lion's attack of a 5-year-old boy garnered national attention and prompted ongoing conversations about wildlife treatment.

Over the weekend, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed it shot and killed the mountain lion that attacked the boy in Monte Nido Thursday.

The mountain lion attacked the child and dragged him 45 yards and left him with injuries on his head, neck and upper torso. The child is in stable condition and recovering from the attack at the hospital.

Community members on Nextdoor and Twitter praised the mother's response and joked about the power of a mother in an emergency.

"The true hero of this story is his mom because she absolutely saved her son's life," Foy told The Associated Press.

This is the first mountain lion attack on a human in Los Angeles in 25 years, the fish and wildlife department said. There were four confirmed mountain lion attacks since 2019 in the rest of of California, the department said.

"Mountain lion attacks are still incredibly rare. That one happened is incredibly unfortunate, and we've heard the boy is stable, and we really, really hope he's going to be OK," said Jordan Traverso, deputy director of communications for the department.

There has been significant community concern about whether the department should have killed the mountain lion, Traverso said. The department does have discretion in many cases, but a lion that attacked a human is considered a public safety threat and required such action, she said.

Some community members were upset by the policy to kill a member of an at-risk animal species. Others wanted stricter regulation of wildlife and are lobbying to allow for open hunting in the area.

The debate following the attack speaks to an ongoing divide in the community about the relationship between residents and wildlife, Topanga Canyon resident Darren Kloomok said.

"This community is in the middle of nature, and we're sort of split between people who think that nature needs to be eliminated so people cannot be threatened by it and people who celebrate how wonderful it is that we have coyotes and lions and bobcats and deer," Kloomok said.

It's a common debate as neighbors in the area frequently post videos from their Ring or Nest cameras of a wildlife spotting. Especially with a recent increase in rattlesnake and coyote sightings in the area, Kloomok has been seeing this debate play out in a heated manner on Nextdoor.

He has tried to remind people to be kind and remember that they all chose to live in an area with lots of wildlife. "We're the ones who have moved into these areas that [are] inhabited by all the wildlife that was here before," Kloomok said.

P-54 And Mountain Lions In The Area

More than one lion was found in the area on the day of the attack: P-54, a mountain lion being studied by the National Park Service as part of a program that follows nearly 100 mountain lions, and her two cubs, the fish and wildlife department confirmed.

One of the cubs was killed following the attack because it was believed to be the attacker, and the other was tagged as P-97 and released near its mother, the department said.

The cubs' birth in June was celebrated as a major win for genetic diversity in the area, an ongoing issue that has prompted the Liberty Canyon Wildlife project to help animals cross the Ventura Freeway (Interstate 101) to protect genetic diversity in the region.

The benefit of the program is twofold: It will protect wildlife from often-fatal freeway traffic and also allow the isolated mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains to mate with the more genetically diverse lions in the Sierra Madre Range.

Community members have tracked P-54 themselves and have long shared sightings. She became locally famous in 2013 when she was spotted eating a deer on Mulholland Drive.

Kloomok said he remembered when the P-54 litter was born and has been reminding people of how excited they were about P-54 in June.

"I was just trying to remind people that this was something we celebrated, and now it's fodder for more of this community warring on each other," Kloomok said.

Correction: Due to an editing error, Ms. Jordan Traverso's gender was misidentified in an earlier version of this report. An earlier version of this story also mistated the role of two other mountain lions in this attack. The two were found in the area following the attack, but they were not believed to have attacked the boy.