I have a hard time imagining where there would be mountain lions (cougars) in the Bay Area. Maybe down the peninsula and close to the ocean - Santa Cruz mountains but otherwise????? The writer should have been more specific as the Bay Area takes in a number of cities surrounding the City of San Francisco and across the bay...and I don’t believe people HIKE there....unless you call walking UP the streets in SF as hiking.
La Honda is generally thought of as the Bay Area (at least by people who don’t live in The City) and that’s a very wild area. And probably people drive from The City to hike there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hermYKHuArc
In 1998(?) a cougar was spotted in eastern MN. It was later spotted in western WI, along the Mississippi river. It was later spotted in south WI, near the IL border. The last reported sighting was in Chicago where it was killed. (I followed the sightings in the news and still believe it was the same cougar in each sighting.) At the 1:50 point in the video above you can see a cop walking down the sidewalk looking for the cougar and it walks right behind him without him noticing.
> I have a hard time imagining where there would be mountain lions (cougars) in the Bay Area.
That’s a laugh. Admittedly the Peninsula is easier to get there but lions routinely take meals in the urban side.
One afternoon I was sitting in a window seat at Pancho Villa Taqueria on B Street in downtown San Mateo enjoying my lunch, on my phone watching a helicopter chase a mountain lion through nearby neighborhoods. Suddenly the chase turns down B street and the lion runs right in front of me, less than 5 feet away, with multiple helicopters thumping overhead and police cars in pursuit , California-style. They darted it a few blocks away when it went through Central Park.
They’ve been spotted in urban Oakland before, and Palo Alto in the suburbia expanse between 101 and El Camino, off Oregon Expressway.