Overview
- Residents were ordered to shelter in place after a mountain lion was seen in a Pasadena residential block near Del Mar Boulevard and Euclid Avenue, prompting a police response and neighborhood closures.
- California Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists tranquilized the animal, assessed it as a young, healthy male, and prepared it for release into the nearest suitable area of the Angeles National Forest.
- Officials said this captured cat is not the same mountain lion that was tranquilized in Santa Monica a week earlier, calling the two incidents coincidental.
- Wildlife agencies urged residents to remove attractants such as unsecured trash, pet food and bird feeders and to keep pets indoors at dawn and dusk to reduce encounter risk.
- Conservation groups and officials point to last year’s wildfires, habitat loss and vehicle collisions as drivers of increased urban sightings, and regulators recently gave threatened status to several mountain lion populations to strengthen protections.