Is a mountain lion roaming Westridge?

Posted by: Ranger Rick ()

Date: August 07, 2013 07:04AM

Is a mountain lion roaming Westridge?
http://www.insidenova.com/news/local/lake_ridge/is-a-mountain-lion-roaming-westridge/article_9327198a-fea5-11e2-9814-0019bb2963f4.html

A mountain lion sighting, eerie screams in the night, the footprints of a huge cat. Just what is going on in Westridge?

One resident of the community off Old Bridge Road just west of Lake Ridge says she is certain she encountered a mountain lion along the walking trails late Friday morning.

“I know what I saw and it was definitely a cougar,” Jan Doble said.

The longtime Westridge resident was walking her dogs on the footpaths near Knightsbridge Drive and Eads Court around 11 a.m. when she came across the big cat.

“I clearly saw it lying on the walking path ready to pounce,” Doble said. “I walked over to the road instead of on the path, then into the yards across from the path to make the call [to the police.] As I was doing this, it got up and walked down the path across Eads then back up.”

After reporting what she’d seen to the police, she walked to the Westridge Homeowner’s Association offices and told a maintenance man about the sighting, as well.

“I clearly saw its longish, low-to-the-ground body, swishing tail and prance-like walk,” Doble said.

To add to the mystery, the night before Doble’s sighting police received a report nearby of loud screams in the woods – the kind of “blood-curdling” sounds a mountain lion typically makes.

Officers checked the area both times and found nothing, said Prince William police spokesman Jonathan Perok. He said the police reports from Westridge indicate what Doble saw may have been a large tan pit bull.

Doble disagrees. “Not a dog,” she said.

Another Westridge resident said she was walking her dogs along the same paths earlier this summer when she came across what looked like the footprints of a huge cat. A few weeks later, walking her dogs, the pets froze and wouldn’t continue on their walk.

Highly populated Westridge seems a most unlikely place for cougar sightings, but it’s not the first time there have been such reports. About 10 years ago, another resident of the neighborhood spotted what she thought was a mountain lion, in the same exact area near Westridge Elementary School. No evidence of the big cat was ever found.

State wildlife biologist Kevin Rose said he doesn’t know exactly what the Westridge residents experienced, but he’s sure it wasn’t a mountain lion.

“More than likely, it’s going to be a dog or unusually large housecat,” Rose said. “Short of hard evidence, we do not believe there are any mountain lions roaming anywhere in the state of Virginia.”

The Department of Game and Inland Fisheries receives several reports of mountain lions – also known as cougars and pumas – every year. But to date, they’ve never found any evidence of the large cats in Virginia. The last cougar ever shot and killed in the commonwealth was in 1882.

“There’s a new phenomena of hunters using trail cameras, there are a lot of trail cameras are out there. They bait trail cameras with a deer carcass or road kill. That’s the perfect attractant for a mountain lion. There’s never been a credible trail picture,” Rose said. “A lot of hunters use dogs and mountain lions tree easily. With dogs chasing it, it’s going to go up a tree. There’s never been a case of that here.”

There’s no shortage of public doubt about the state’s stance on mountain lions. At least three websites are devoted to cougar sightings in Virginia and West Virginia.

Even the state Game and Inland Fisheries website reports there have been unconfirmed sightings over the last few years as close as Spotsylvania and Fauquier counties. But they are just that, unconfirmed.

“They’re just not here,” Rose said.

It’s a commonly held belief that the Eastern puma – as mountain lions are called here – are extinct. That may be, but there are still cougars of some sort roaming the United States.

Game officials say there are known cougar populations in Florida, Texas, Michigan, Louisiana, Colorado, Arkansas and California.

In 1994, former Prince William County Board of Supervisors Chairman Kathleen Seefeldt’s sister, Iris Kenna, was mauled to death by a cougar at a park near San Diego.

So if it wasn’t a mountain lion, what did Doble see?

Prince William County has bobcats and coyotes, particularly around Quantico Marine Corps base.

Bobcats, Rose said, are “very secretive” and don’t tolerate people well.

“But they will move through suburban neighborhoods” on their way to large, wooded tracts, he said.

“Especially as we expand the human footprint, we are going to see more of these wild critters like bobcats and black bears,” he said.

In a 2011 article in Virginia Wildlife magazine, state wildlife biologist David Kocka debunks any theories that mountain lions are roaming Virginia, or anywhere along the Mid-Atlantic. But Kocka states that mountain lions do appear to be migrating eastward.

“If they move this far, could they become established here over time?” Kocka asks. “The answer will depend on their ability to adapt to a state with over seven million human inhabitants. The prey base is waiting for them, as well as many diehard fans of these elusive creatures.”

A mountain lion captured in California in 2011. The cat was later released, and was shot and killed in March 2012 after killing domestic goats. A UCSC undergraduate volunteering with the project took the photo. (Photo by Melissa Holbrook)
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