Police warned Oceanside residents Thursday about a wild mountain lion seen roaming around neighborhoods and businesses earlier this week.
The mountain lion was spotted in several areas of the city, including on North Coast Highway near Aster Street, on South Coast Highway near Oak Street and on State-Route 76 at Rancho Del Oro, Officer Tom Bussey said in a news release Thursday.
Three security camera videos distributed by police show the animal walking at night through an empty shopping center plaza, a parking structure and crossing a street.
Bussey said police are working with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife after the recent sightings. He told people who come across the mountain lion not to approach or disturb it.
It’s unclear why the big cat has been roaming in such an urban area. Megan Senour, a biologist with Fish and Wildlife, theorized that the young mountain lion could be trying to find a new home.
“From the videos, this appears to be a younger cat, so it could be a dispersing juvenile looking for their own territory,” Senour said.
State officials said mountain lion sightings are not unusual in California because half the state is considered the species’ habitat. However, the sightings tend to occur more in communities closer to mountain ranges, in a zone biologists call the “human-wildlife interface,” where developed communities bump up against open space.
And while Oceanside is an urban area, surrounded by freeways and major roads, it also has undeveloped areas that wildlife use as corridors to travel in between patches of habitat, Senour said.
“Wildlife, including mountain lions, do not recognize human boundaries and will often come into the interface and sometimes end up going further into urban areas,” Senour said.
When migrating between areas, feline predators have been known to attack household pets. However, mountain lions try to avoid humans, even when they get lost in urban settings, the biologist said.
“Human-mountain lion interactions are incredibly rare in California,” Senour said. “This animal is moving about the landscape when we would expect them to: around dawn, dusk, and overnight. They are incredibly smart and resilient and often are able to make it back to suitable habitat on their own,” she said.
Police told residents if they spot the cat acting aggressively, or if they see it near a school or park to call 911 immediately. All other sightings can be reported to the department at (760) 435-4911.
