In California Enclave,
Cougars Keep the People at Bay
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
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Matt Thomas searches for mountain lion tracks on a neighbor's
estate in Atherton, Calif., and sends a weekly e-mail report to his fellow
residents. (I only send e-mails when a
neighbor contacts me about either a sighting or asks me to track on
their property. That is a can of Bear Spray and a knife on my belt. I
have a retractable leash in my hand. Snoops is capable of detecting
mountain lions from at least 20 yards away and possibly even longer so she is my
main warning and then we would withdraw. The Bear Spray is for a
deterrent if our withdrawal were not enough and the knife is in case I run
out of Bear Spray. If you think this is excessive, I would like to point
out that when police officers or the game warden respond to a mountain lion
sighting, they are MUCH more heavily armed.)
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ATHERTON, Calif. - You would think that if you plunked down
$10 million for a home, including millions to buy three adjoining properties,
you could count on a little freedom to roam. But then the occasional mountain
lion traipses across your land and, if you are Barbara Proulx, you feel trapped,
afraid to let your two young sons out by themselves because of the dangers
lurking outside. (She does not have two sons so either
this is to protect their identies or even "A" students make 10%
errors.)
Mrs. Proulx and her husband, Tom, a founder of the software company Intuit,
even have a three-hole golf course on their 10-plus acres, yet in recent months
it has gotten far less use than in the past.
"I won't let my children go to the tennis court by themselves anymore," Mrs.
Proulx said. She does not permit the boys, ages 9 and 11, to walk to the pool on
their own, either. Her parents live in a home on her property, but "they're
terrified."
"Except to come to my house," she said, "they never go outside."
They are hardly the only ones in the area feeling like prisoners in
multimillion-dollar homes. In recent months, there have been a few publicized
mountain lion sightings up and down this peninsula just south of San Francisco,
especially in the area's rural, more upscale neighborhoods, out of the reach of
most people beyond venture capitalists and those made outlandishly wealthy by
Silicon Valley's star companies. (Do I detect an
anti-wealthy person bias here? I would like to point out that many residents
have been living here long before the Silicon Valley era.)
Yet nowhere has this fear been more pronounced than in Atherton, the
country's second-wealthiest community after Rancho Santa Fe, in Southern California.
Here, largely because of the efforts of a single neighbor, vast backyards sit
largely unused. (We have an adult female mountain lion
and her kit roaming through our neighborhoods. Even the California Fish and Game
suggestions for what to do in mountain lion country say not to leave children
unattended, bend over, walk alone, etc. My neighbors are
concerned about the mountain lion, NOT about me.)
More than a matter of man versus nature, the battle over the Silicon Valley's
mountain lions is pitting human against human.
Wildlife experts say that residents are overreacting to the presence of a
stealthy animal that has been part of the landscape for as long as there has
been a California. (I have lived here for 20 years
and 15 months ago was the first time a mountain lion was sighted in our
neighborhood. Another neighbor has lived here for 58 years and this was
the first time she ever saw a mountain lion 18" from her back
patio window.) They say that mountain lions - also known as
cougars - present an infinitesimal threat, especially if people avoid behavior
like jogging alone at dawn or dusk close to the reservoir on Atherton's western
border. (Again CFG safety guidelines say to
not leave children unattended, bend over, etc. when in Mountain Lion
territory which now includes our back yards.)
But residents here pay a lot so they can raise their children far from grime,
grit and two-legged predators, and they seem to resent the animals' presence.
"It's a beautiful animal, but mountain lions don't belong in our
neighborhood," said Raymond Lane, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield &
Byers, Silicon Valley's most storied venture capital firm, who lives two doors
from the Proulx family. "The answer is to take them out."
Mr. Lane said he would do the deed himself if it were not against the law.
Except in emergencies, the California Department of Fish and Game must approve
the killing of mountain lions, which were given special protection by voters in
1990. (In 2004, over 200 depredation permits were issued by
CFG to remove mountain lions in California, resulting in the removal of
116, mostly in rural counties, which are more like mountain lion "natural
habitat" than suburban back yards in Atherton. The mere presence of a
mountain lion near a sheep pen or cattle stockade are grounds to issue a
permit.)
Town officials confirm only six mountain lion sightings over the last 15
months. "We've seen no evidence of a proliferation of mountain lions," said
Chief Robert J. Brennan of the Atherton Police Department. (
I have NEVER said we have a "proliferation". There is an adult male who comes
through once every 5-6 weeks, and an adult female once a week. She had two
yearling to two year olds who seemed to migrate North last Nov/Dec and this
spring she had another kit.)
Instead, he traces the recent fear to a man named Matt Thomas, a 54-year-old
retiree who has been known to ask permission from his neighbors to comb their
yards in search of cougar droppings. (I have only found
cougar droppings once, when a neighbor asked me to look at them for
confirmation. I only track when neighbors ask me to track. Any
wildlife biologist would agree that tracks and scat are significant signs of the
presence of an animal. We all know the answer to "Does a bear poop in the
woods?" Therefore if my neighbors find mountain lion poop
in their back yard, then we can reasonably conclude that a mountain lion
was there. I told the Atherton Police and Fish and Game about
this evidence but they declined to collect it. If I had collected it,
then it could NOT have been used as evidence.)
Last summer, after his gardener said he saw a mountain lion strolling down
the street, Mr. Thomas placed a letter in scores of mailboxes describing what he
said was a spike in sightings. He warned them to keep closer watch over their
children. (I never said "spike". I first called
the police but they did not respond to that sighting since my call was a day
later. Only after several reported sightings by other residents and
visitors over a 3 month period, each time I would only notify the police
and California Department of Fish and Game. They said they would send
someone out but they only had one game warden for San Mateo and Santa Clara
county so it was several months before two officers came out. They said
under the current laws they "cannot remove a mountain lion until it threatens
someone." Only then, which was several months after my gardener's
sighting, did I notify residents of confirmed sightings of a
"large brown cat, larger than a lab, with a long tail," which are most
likely mountain lion sightings, since children were left unattended at school
bus stops in the morning. The CFG warnings about living in mountain lion
territory say that leaving children unattended or being out at dawn
are not good safety practices.)
Since then, Mr. Thomas has devoted countless hours each week to his cause. He
constantly reads about mountain lions (constantly is an
exaggeration since my main passion these days is photography.), plays
amateur tracker (I am not Tom Brown but I have studied
tracking of leopards and lions from indigenous people around the world, for
example, within the last few years, the Kikyu and Masai in East Africa and the
Ovambi and San in Botswana. They are very good teachers and at Stanford,
I earned my Bachelors and Masters degrees in Biology in 4 years instead of
6, with academic and departmental honors, so I am considered by at least one
university to be a good student. Tracking is not play but serious
work.) and generally serves as a thorn in the side of local officials.
(I'm sure they have called me a lot worse...)
Despite assertions by the police and wildlife experts, Mr. Thomas says
residents in his part of Atherton have reported 40 sightings in the last
year.
Mountain Lion Indications from Spring
04-7/28/05
red are sightings
by reliable witnesses of a "brown cat, larger than a lab, with a long
tail"
green are tracks,
scat or 2 deer kills
yellow are some of
the dog's alarm barks that are associated with sightings
orange are possible
trails
(18 of these 43 sightings by reliable
witnesses were NOT in Atherton but in Woodside which is our immediate
neighbor. I have or can obtain the names, addresses and phone numbers
of most of the people who reported these sightings and told the police to
contact them and vice versa, at the time of the sighting.)
"I try to make everyone in authority aware of the problem here,
but I guess no one is going to take us seriously until a child is attacked,"
said Mr. Thomas, the father of three teenage boys. Unlike many here who made
their fortunes working in the computer industry, Mr. Thomas founded a string of
storefront self-defense training centers. (I never had a
"string of storefronts..." I
personally trained over 10,000 women in my self defense program and my
students trained over 40,000 additional students over a 30 year period. In
those 30 years, I NEVER turned a woman away for financial reasons.
Articles about my well-respected classes have been featured in LIFE, People,
Glamour, Black Belt, Stern (Germany), Focus (Japan), Figaro Madame (France), New
Woman (Australia), as the state of the art self defense program.)
Mr. Thomas's tools include a 10-million-candlepower spotlight that
can illuminate his backyard like a Wal-Mart parking lot; (a
bit of an overstatement since I actually would need 4 of them for my
backyard to equal the lumens of a Wal-Mart parking lot) a
military-issue device that amplifies sound by a factor of 10; (Peltors are electronic hearing amplification and protectors
used by SWAT as well as Special Operations military units but
mine were purchased from civilian sources.) and a half-dozen
Gen 3 Night Vision Scopes, (Since when are 3 half a
dozen? I have 1 Gen 3 and 2 Gen 2's, which were purchased from civilian sources
and in the past, I have loaned them to Atherton Police
officers and San Mateo Sheriff's deputies when they were pursuing
human prowlers as well as for searching for mountain
lions.) which would outline a cougar in green if he ever
spotted one. (OK Gary, I can take a joke, I admit, I
laughed when I read this.)
But his most effective weapon is the computer he uses to send e-mail alerts
to those living in what he dubs his "sector." The electronic missives, long and
chatty, report in great detail on every sighting reported to him by neighbors
and include references to, say, the speed with which this "apex predator" could
kill a child. (Mountain Lions are considered by most
wildlife biologists to be "apex predators" since the Grizzly is now extinct in
California. In one e-mail from perhaps 50 e-mails, in response
to a neighbor's concern about leaving their child in their
backyard I asked that even though the Atherton Police have an
excellent response time of 2 minutes in an emergency, would you want your child
being mauled by a mountain lion for two minutes?)
"These e-mails have gotten
everyone stirred up into such a frenzy that people think mountain lions are
knocking on people's doors, ready to come in," said Terry Palmisano, a senior
wildlife specialist with the Fish and Game Department.
(My neighbors are reasonable, intelligent, rational, people
who are hardly in a "frenzy". I have never
said or implied that "mountain lions are knocking on people's
doors". These are two exaggerations rather than sticking to the
facts.) Ms. Palmisano said that one supposed sighting turned out to
be a 10-pound tabby cat, another a raccoon.
(The tabby cat
incident was in Palo Alto, Deb Barten's area and I never reported it as a
sighting. None of my reported sightings turned out to be a raccoon.
Out of 44 reported sightings, the only erroneous sighting I reported, that
turned out to be a red fox, was corrected immediately by following
e-mails, when Deb Bartens determined what it actually was. I ONLY
report sightings of a "brown cat, larger than a lab, with a long
tail" My error rate is 2%, which I corrected. Why doesn't
Terry stick to what I have reported? So far she has made 2
exaggerations and 2 errors in 4 statements.)Mountain lions live on the edge of urban areas up and down California, but in
100 years maybe 15 people have been attacked, (Mountain
lions were bounty hunted for the first 70 years so that is probably why
there were only 2 attacks during that period. 1986 was the first of the
recent attacks so California has had at least 13 attacks in the past 30 years.)
Ms. Palmisano said. The last death was in 2003, (actually 2004, error # 3) when a cougar killed a bicyclist
in Southern California. (Then it attacked a woman bicyclist
soon afterwards, who was only saved after her physically fit best friend
and two physically fit bicyclists fought the mountain lion off. Why did
she omit this extremely relevant fact about this attack?) In May
2004, the police in Palo Alto, just south of Atherton, killed a mountain lion
that had been spotted in a tree not far from a school. Animal rights advocates
protested, but Ms. Palmisano said the cougar was a danger to the children. (So a mountain lion sitting in a tree in Palo Alto is a
danger to children but she does not consider a mountain lion running loose and
mostly undetected in Atherton a danger to children? One Atherton morning
sighting on the 300 block of Walsh Road according the Palo Alto
Daily News, was within 300 yards of Las Lomitas Elementary
school. Even though school was not in session, there is a day care center
near there which was, and many children play in the school yard during the
summer. The mountain lion that was killed in San Jose earlier this year
which was also deemed a danger to children was much further away that this
from any elementary schools.)
Last November, the Atherton police held a community meeting, hoping that
local wildlife experts could quell people's fears. But the meeting seemed to
have the opposite effect, said Scott Dettmer, a lawyer who lives in Atherton.
"It was like a scene from 'Jaws,' " Mr. Dettmer said. "The speakers included
this one mountain lion expert who described how a mountain lion can crush a
human skull and jump a 15-foot fence. That managed to get everyone worked up
even more."
Most people living in Mr. Dettmer's corner of Atherton seem to have a
mountain lion story. Stephanie Lane said she had not allowed her children to
play outside unsupervised since she spotted a mountain lion outside her window.
(Isn't this what the CFG warnings say to
do?) Mrs. Proulx said that last month, a cub came within 10 feet of
her, scampering away only when called by what she presumed to be its mother.
(This cub was 30-40 pounds and coming straight at her until
it stopped suddenly, looked around and then ran back to probably its
mother. Have you ever watched a domestic kitten play with
something? Would you want a 30-40 pound "kit" to play with you the same
way? If Barbara had tried to deter the cub, which is what the CFG safety
suggestions state to do, what would the mother mountain lion have
done? I have repeatedly pointed out that the kit's mother has
had ample opportunities to harm humans but has NOT considered them prey,
probably because we have an abundant deer population. My two concerns
are, 1) What prey will she need when the deer get scarce? What will
her kit prey on when it becomes a two year old, since these
juveniles are not as adept as hunters and do go through the behavioral
phase of adapting to new prey? Most of the attacks on humans are by these
juveniles. Last year, the two juveniles seemed to have migrated North,
since they stopped being sighted in our area and suddenly our neighbors to the
north started reporting small mountain lion sightings. Where will our kit
migrate since now the North is a mountain lion occupied territory?)
People are pulling whatever levers they can to pressure local leaders to take
action. Mrs. Proulx has pressed the city to fire Chief Brennan for not doing
more about the cougars. (I think Barbara can express her own
reasons on this topic.)
Chief Brennan said, "I understand the frustration level, but if the thing is
going about its business and doing nothing more than running across a property,
that's not a behavior that allows us to shoot it." (We
have asked that they be trapped and removed. Again, if our back yards were
a sheep pen or cattle stockade, this would be grounds to issue a depredation
permit in rural counties which are much more like natural mountain lion habitats
than our back yards.)
Not everyone in the hills above Silicon Valley is living in fear. Paul Saffo,
a technology consultant who lives just north of Atherton, says the real threat
is posed by people like Mr. Thomas, whom he has never met. (What does Paul know about mountain lions? What does he know
about my background or my years of service to my country
and community? I would be glad to publicly debate him, Terry, or
anyone else about the mountain lion situation.)
"This gentleman," he said of Mr. Thomas, "is finding excuses to pander to his
own irrational fears."
(Interesting choice of language. Personally, I am NOT afraid of
mountain lions. I have a healthy respect for them. They are apex
predators which easily kill much more alert prey like deer, which have
better hearing, better peripheral vision, better smell, travel in herds, and can
run a heck of a lot faster than I can. I follow the safety guidelines
issued by CFG, which are even posted at the entrance to our block so I
doubt that I personally am in any danger from the mountain lions. My
current German Shepherd has been a successful warning and deterrent to the
mountain lion coming into my back yard, even though it has been seen by reliable
witnesses, in all of my adjacent neighbor's yards.
I have Bachelor's and Master's
degrees in biology from Stanford and double majored in psychology. For 12
years I successfully taught the Bear Defense Course for the US Geological
Survey, Alaska Branch and I have successfully body guarded 9 hiking safari in
Africa, so I know a fair amount about apex predators. I have
studied numerous martial arts for over 42 years. What are Paul's
credentials and experiences on these or related safety and protection
topics?)
"If he were concerned about the welfare of children, he'd be organizing
around bicycle helmets, crossing guards, seat belts, child molesters, television
advertising or any of a long list of factors that represent a greater threat
than mountain lions."
What is Paul's expertise about children's safety issues and who is he to
judge me?
I personally know that due to
the extremely safety conscious principals, teachers, staff and concerned
PTA parents, our local elementary and middle school have EXCELLENT safety
programs about bicycle helmets, crossing guards, seat belts, child molesters,
etc. All three of my sons went through them and shared their information
with us. We have a very excellent, safety conscious, school system in
place.
If there is a gap in safety, a
parent volunteer fills the gap. For example, my wife, Debra,
volunteered hundreds of hours to establish an earthquake preparedness program
for our local schools with the help of the school district, staff and
other PTA parents. This covered communications, emergency procedures,
spare clothing and food for children if they had to remain at school, first aid
supplies and even including safety-filming all of the windows so they
wouldn't shatter and spread high speed glass projectiles like the Coalinga
schools' windows did during their earthquake. We are a safety
conscious family.
Due to another concerned parent,
a special education teacher, volunteered hundreds of hours to modify my
Protecting Children from Danger Seminar Program to be taught to
all of the students at Las Lomitas, two years ago. The PTA paid me for 10
hours and I volunteered over 100 hours so with this other parent, the PE
teachers, staff and parent volunteers, we were able to teach all
450 students in two weeks. She wrote an excellent teacher's manual so
this year she and the PE teachers taught the well respected program on
their own.
For the past 6 years, in
the Spring, I have volunteered to help the PE teachers at La
Entrada teach a modified self-defense program based on my highly acclaimed, self
defense for women classes, to all of the 8th graders at La Entrada.
I believe in truth in action,
not criticism of others from afar. I am not criticizing Paul but I am
asking, what are Paul's personal actions and how many hours has he spent on
them, for children's safety for his community?)
In conclusion, perhaps there is
truth in the proverb, "No good deed goes unpunished..."
I certainly hope there is no
truth to the proverb, "If you don't like the news, shoot the
messenger!"
I would like to focus on the
mountain lion safety issue from an intelligent and knowledgeable
perspective to assess risks of this specific mountain lion in our specific
neighborhood.
. Even if we have only had 6
verified sightings, instead of the reported 43 in the community, (25 in
Atherton itself), please read David Baron's excellent text, The Beast in the
Garden, to see how even 6 would have been enough for the Boulder
Police to remove this mountain lion if it happened in their community.
This is the best exhaustive study from many different perspectives of the
problem we are not facing and is extremely well written.
Please read Linda Lewis'
excellent, and well documented, web site about the mountain lion attacks on
humans over the past 30 years and reach your own conclusions if you want the
possibility of an attack like any one of these, to exist in your
neighborhood.
http://cougarinfo.org
Earlier in July, Babara Proulx's
gardener saw the mountain lion mother and cub come within 25 feet of him.
The professional tracker from the Federal Wildlife Services interviewed him in
Spanish and said that he felt that this was a reliable witness
account.
When Barbara reported the
mountain lion cub coming within 10 feet of her, the Wild Life Services tracker
interviewed her and felt that hers was a reliable witness account.
Since California Fish and Game
did not return her phone calls at first, Barbara's husband called Arizona
Fish and Game and they said that this familiarity with humans and
aggressive behavior was dangerous and would be grounds for removal in their
jurisdiction.
Read the behavioral danger signs
by two of the most prominent experts on mountain lion behavior and draw your own
conclusions.
http://cougarinfo.org/fitztabl.htm.
Thank you for reading my
reply to the New York Times article. Draw your own conclusions.
Matt