Mountain lion roaming San Francisco’s streets located near park, say officials

Key Highlights

• The San Francisco Chronicle reported the mountain lion had been tranquilized and will be released into the wild. The mountain lion was first spotted on Monday morning by a San Francisco resident who took a video of the animal and alerted authorities.“It was so big … not just a regular cat,” Madrey Hilton told the San Francisco Chronicle.
• The lion, which “just looked like it was minding its own business”, scaled a wall and headed into Lafayette Park, she told the newspaper. Mountain lion sightings are rare in San Francisco, where coyotes abound in the city’s many parks, but cougars have been spotted wandering city streets before. In 2020, a young mountain lion was spotted sleeping in a planter box along a normally busy street and looking at his reflection in the glass of an office tower in downtown San Francisco.
• The animal was later safely captured and released into the wild. Experts say the animals come up along the Pacific Coast from the hills south of the city, but eventually find their way back to the wilderness. Explore more on these topicsSan FranciscoWest CoastCalifornianewsShareReuse this content.