Matthew Brown
Billings, US: A woman has been killed in a suspected mountain lion attack while hiking alone in the mountains of northern Colorado, in what would be the first fatal attack by one of the predators in the state in more than 25 years, authorities said.
Wildlife officers later located two mountain lions in the area and fatally shot the animals, said Kara Van Hoose of Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
The attack occurred on Thursday, Colorado time, in the mountains south of the small community of Glen Haven, about 11 kilometres north-east of Estes Park and considered the gateway to the eastern entrance of Rocky Mountain National Park.
Shortly before noon, two hikers encountered a mountain lion near the woman’s body along a remote section of the Crosier Mountain trail, which is in a national forest.
The hikers threw rocks at the animal to scare it from the immediate area so they could try to help the woman, Van Hoose said. One of the hikers was a physician, who attended to the victim and did not find a pulse, she said.
Details on the woman’s injuries and cause of death were not immediately released.
Van Hoose said the search for other mountain lions in the area was ongoing. She said circumstances would dictate whether any additional lions that were found were killed.
Sightings of mountain lions were common in the forested area where the suspected attack occurred but there had not been any recent documented attacks on humans, Van Hoose said.
“This is a very common time of year to take mountain lion sightings and reports … especially in Larimer County, where this is very good mountain lion habitat,” she said. “Trails in this area are in pretty remote land, so it’s wooded, it’s rocky, there’s elevation gains and dips.”
Mountain lion attacks are rare, and Colorado’s last suspected fatal attack was in 1999, when a three-year-old was killed. Two years before that, a 10-year-old boy was killed by a lion and dragged away while hiking with family members in Rocky Mountain National Park.
Last year in Northern California, two brothers were stalked and then attacked by a lion that they tried to fight off. One of the brothers was killed.
The animals, also known as cougars, catamounts and other names, can weigh 60 kilograms and grow to more than 1.8 metres long. They primarily eat deer.
Colorado has an estimated 3800 to 4400 of the animals, which are classified as a big-game species in the state and can be hunted.
AP
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