In most cases, visitors glimpse the elusive predator from behind the wheel of a car. According to a bulletin published by Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.There are about 150 mountain lion sightings in Big Bend National Park each year. Texas Mountain Lion Characteristics: The mountain lion is a large, slender cat with a smallish head and noticeably long tail.Cougar(Puma concolor), is also called mountain lion, panther, catamount or puma. You should consider yourself fortunate if you ever get the opportunity to see one of these big cats. Lions are reclusive by nature. The average mountain lion home ranges in the Trans Pecos are 50,000 to 80,000 acres.
The parents fought the lion off, but the boy was injured.The mountain lion that was killed, estimated to weigh about 200 pounds, was struck by Graford High School basketball player Xavier Harrison about 6:30 p.m. A lion seized a 6-year-old boy while he was walking with his parents in the Chisos Basin, the most developed part of the park. The most recent attack took place in February 2012. Since the park opened in 1944, there have been only seven instances in which human beings have been attacked and injured by lions. Our exciting mountain lion hunts take place on privately owned ranches with which we have exclusive arrangements, so that our hunters have the best opportunity.
“But it’s still something that needs to be addressed, and the park recognizes that, which is the reason for this study. It could help reduce the potential for dangerous encounters – and open a window into the behavior and demographics of the region’s top predator.Patricia Moody Harveson is leading the institute’s research.“When you think about all the lions that are there, it’s amazing – it’s such a tiny, small percentage of the time that something like this actually happens,” she says. And in 2014, the institute began a study in the park. Drought conditions at the time were extreme, and the lion was emaciated, and depleted by intestinal disease.In the wake of the attack, park officials reached out to specialists at the Borderlands Research Institute in Alpine.
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“They are extremely important in the healthy function of our ecosystems, so we want them in these environments, but we also have to respect that it’s a very lethal predator, and so how we behave, and how we conduct ourselves in a situation like that, so that it allows both humans and lions to coexist – that’s what’s important. The BRI study could help the park balance these two aims.“Because you want those animals there, those animals need to be there, mountain lions being the apex predator out here,” she says. But the park service is also charged with preserving the mountain lion population, for the benefit of future generations. Park officials believe the effluent could be a reason for the lion encounters.Harveson says the park could be home to as many as eight mountain lions.Visitor safety is a priority for park officials.
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