Mountain Lion Spotted In Castro Valley?

(Editor's note: photo for illustration only. No picture was taken of the animal reported.)

A Patch reader from Castro Valley sent in this report from the Five Canyons Neighborhood Watch email list. It was dated Thursday, Feb. 29:

"My wife was coming home 30 minutes ago (around 8:25pm) and saw a tan colored mountain lion run across the parkway near the Boulder Canyon intersection. She called a friend that was coming home around the same time and he said he saw two animals in the area that looked like mountain lions. Anyone else see these cats?"

Alameda County Sheriff's Department Spokesman J. D. Nelson said he had no such report Thursday night, but added that mountain lions and coyotes have been spotted in Castro Valley in the past.

Mountain lions are periodically reported throughout some of the less populous parts of the Bay Area. There was a sighting in San Mateo County last Friday.

An East Bay Regional Parks District web page says mountain lions are native to the Bay Area and are occasionally seen here, though they generally avoid contact with humans.

"There is no record of a mountain lion ever having attacked a person in Contra Costa or Alameda Counties, and the only recorded attack in the San Francisco Bay Area took place in 1909," the web page says.

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