Perhaps you’ve heard about the predators washing up on the beaches of Santa Cruz lately? Well, today, one got caught up a tree in the East Cliff and 17th Street area of the famous California surf town.
People sometimes forget how mountainous and wild the Santa Cruz region is. Mountain biking was practiacally invented there. Rivers run wild in the region. And big animals roam the coastal mountains. The young, 80-pound lion, which was spotted by a witness this morning, was captured when the sheriffs department, Fish and Game and the Santa Cruz Puma Project, part of UC Santa Cruz, came up with a plan to tranquilize the animal and move it to a more apporpriate locale. The animal was unharmed but Puma Project spokespeople did say the animal would be fitted with a GPS tracking system for research.
Mountain lions regularly traverse the foothills and farmlands of the greater Bay Area. In December, a large cat was seen dragging a deer off the a front lawn in Hillsborough.
