This is another mess that got started during the Clintoon years, the liberal love of predators. That insane love made these killers protected and without anything to control their population.
I never saw a cougar or even fresh tracks until the mid 1990's after it became against the law to hunt cougars in California and Oregon.
Besides sightings in the daylight with no fear on the part of the cougars, a more dangerous non sighting event became common place with many of us who fished in the back country and even a short distance off the road.
That was finding fresh cougar tracks over our tracks when we returned to our vehicles. This was scary enough during the day, but when cougar tracks were seen over our tracks after or at about sunset it was very scary.
I stopped this practice after returning to my vehicle after dark in the Sierras one warm summer evening. A mother cougar and her two big descendants had left tracks all over my tracks for about a mile.
Follow up story from todays paper... http://www.times-standard.com/local/ci_5100552