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Over the past nearly four decades, there has been heated debate in San Benito County between government agencies, in particular the California Department of Fish & Wildlife (CDFW), and local ranchers and agriculture officials who have repeatedly argued that mountain lion numbers have increased sharply and are harming deer populations.
Mountain lions had thrived in California for thousands of years and were hunted into near extinction, with more than 12,000 killed during the “bounty years” of 1906-1963, according to the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.
Then in 1972, a moratorium was set on hunting them. The state stopped all big game or trophy hunting of mountain lions in 1990 with Prop 117, which classified them as “specially protected mammals.” Since then, they have continued to thrive and CDFW estimates the numbers have grown from 1,500-3,000 in 1972, to more than 4,500 statewide, while agencies believe there are just 40 in this county.
Rumors of relocation
There have been repeated rumors in San Benito that mountain lions have been relocated into the county, but no evidence has been uncovered to prove one way or another that such has taken place. The sentiment among rural residents is that the number of lions is increasing as the deer population continues to drop.
Zackery Mills, a wildlife biologist with CDFW, maintains the agency has not relocated any predators, including mountain lions, into the county, and that it would be illegal for any other persons or organizations to do so.
On Feb. 12, Gabilan Cattle Company manager Jeff Mundell posted on Instagram that the ranch is working with CDFW to capture and collar mountain lions. Mills later confirmed that he has been working with the ranch for a few months on the project.
Mundell told BenitoLink a single female mountain lion was treed but could not be safely captured so it was allowed to escape.
“CDFW colleagues and I are actively capturing mountain lions using hounds over the next few months in that landscape, including Gabilan Ranch,” Mills told BenitoLink, adding that he had not revealed the plan to collar the mountain lions to BenitoLink previously because, “I don’t like to share my capture efforts for any species.”
When asked why this was the case, Mills did not respond.
Will Baldocchi, chief financial officer and one of the 14 owners of Gabilan Cattle Company, confirmed that the ranch is cooperating with CDFW to attach GPS collars. He said he believes there are perhaps six lions on the ranch, which he said migrated there on their own, and that the ranch owners had not relocated any.
Baldocchi said Mills estimated the six lions range in the area between Gabilan Ranch and Rocks Ranch. He said a formal engagement with CDFW began in January and will continue until Mills is satisfied with their efforts.
“Part of our mission as owners and operators of this ranch is land stewardship and regenerative landscape development,” he said. “Being good stewards of the entire ecosystem, whether that’s predators, grasslands, whatever it is, we see this as just a continuation of our efforts to manage the property as if we weren’t there.”
According to the Mountain Lion Federation newsletter, at the February California Fish and Game Commission meeting in Sacramento, officials unanimously voted to designate six distinct mountain lion populations—from the Santa Cruz Mountains through Southern California—as threatened under the California Endangered Species Act.
This decision follows a recommendation by CDFW and aims to “provide stronger, long-term legal protections for these big cats, which face serious threats from habitat fragmentation, vehicle strikes, rat poisons and genetic isolation,” according to an agency press release.
State agencies must now consider the impacts of development on mountain lion habitat and pursue conservation measures, including wildlife crossings and habitat connectivity improvements.
This means that, according to CDFW, every agency with permitting, planning, funding or land management authority must now evaluate whether their actions could harm mountain lion habitat or impede habitat connectivity. This is not optional—it becomes a legal duty.
For the average citizen it could affect housing developments by increasing construction costs, as well as funding for wildlife crossings over highways, such as the one planned for Hwy 101 near Rocks Road. There may be more emphasis on open spaces and an increase in public safety messaging, according to CDFW and the California Fish and Game Commission.
Relocating problem mountain lions
California wildlife officials admit to trapping and relocating problem mountain lions in an effort to protect people or vulnerable wildlife. These efforts have had mixed results.
Earlier this year, a young male lion that wandered through San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood was tranquilized by the CDFW and relocated into habitat in Santa Cruz County.
By contrast, in 2021 in Hollister, a mountain lion spotted in a residential area was shot by police after tranquilizer attempts failed. It later died at the Oakland Zoo. In a botched attempt to protect endangered Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep, CDFW relocated two male mountain lions hundreds of miles from their home range to reduce predation, but both died of starvation while trying to return home, leading officials to revise relocation practices.
In 2022, another lion was taken from Visalia to an undisclosed location in the Sierra Nevada.
Living with mountain lions
Mountain lions live throughout the Gabilan and Diablo ranges, and sightings in San Benito County tend to rise during dry months when prey move closer to civilization and creek corridors, according to CDFW. Wildlife experts say encounters with the big cats remain rare, but hikers, ranchers and farmers can reduce risks by staying alert and knowing how to respond.
CDFW, through its Wildlife Conflicts Toolkit, recommends hiking in groups, keeping children and pets close, and avoiding dense brush at dawn and dusk when lions are most active. Ranchers can reduce attractants by securing livestock feed, removing carcasses promptly, and using night lighting or motion‑activated alarms around pens. Calves, goats and sheep are most vulnerable, especially during fawning season when lions are already hunting more actively.
More than once, a mountain lion has been spotted on the De Anza Trail near San Juan Bautista. Most sightings, though, have taken place in the Panoche Valley, Diablo Range foothills and ranchlands south and east of Hollister.
According to CDFW reports, there have been no verified attacks on livestock or humans over the last 10 years. Despite the reports, several of rancher David Brigantino’s animals were killed near San Justo Reservoir in late 2024.
The National Park Services guidance on how to react if you hear a mountain lion—whose sounds range from a bird-like chirp to a roar or hissing snarl—or encounter a mountain lion while hiking, begins with what might seem obvious: don’t run. Instead, stand tall, make yourself look larger and speak firmly. Maintain eye contact and slowly create distance. If the lion behaves aggressively, throw rocks or sticks without crouching or turning your back. In the extremely rare event of an attack, fight back with anything available and protect your neck.
Since around 2000, mountain lion movements have been tracked by GPS collars provided primarily by the UC Davis mountain lion project. The public can see real time tracking at the Santa Cruz Puma Project website as they migrate back and forth between Santa Cruz and San Benito counties.
In San Benito County, mountain lions most often travel along the Gabilan Range that runs from San Juan Bautista to the southern end of Pinnacles National Park. Each year, three to eight mountain lions successfully cross over into San Benito County through the Gabilan Range corridor that includes Hwy 101, according to peer‑reviewed science, CDFW data and UC Santa Cruz Puma Project research.
Over the last five years, three to five mountain lions have been killed by automobiles while attempting to enter San Benito County near Rocks Ranch, a 2,600-acre property on the San Benito-Santa Cruz County line.
According to BenitoLink’s Feb. 2 article, construction is planned for a wildlife crossing to prevent fatal encounters and guarantee regional biodiversity of not only mountain lions but other wildlife, as well. Construction is expected to start between 2030 and 2033.
Lion attacks livestock near Hollister
David Brigantino is part of the multigenerational Brigantino family that has been involved in local real estate, ranching and farming since 1959. He met CDFW biologist Mills when he came out to his ranch located in San Justo Gulch below the San Justo Reservoir dam to investigate the killings of five sheep and three goats by one or more mountain lions over a three-month period.
“It kept coming back about every week to 10 days,” Brigantino said. “Zack came out and slept on the floor of our home as he stayed two nights trying to catch it.”
Brigantino said Mills told him that he had captured the same lion twice before, put a collar on it and released it. Mills told Brigantino that the lion had traveled to Paicines and back before the collar fell off.
“So, we knew it was back,” Brigantino said. “He could not catch it again and I said he should use dogs, but he said that he couldn’t do that because it required all kinds of paperwork.”
Brigantino said he told Mills some of the lions needed to be killed.
“He didn’t like that but that’s what should have been done,” Brigantino said. “We have too many lions and there’s not enough deer for them.”
He went on to say that he came up with an idea that he hoped would keep the lions away from his animals.
“I got a donkey to protect them. So far, the lion hasn’t come back,” he said, “The donkey protected a baby goat one day when it killed a fox that was after the goat.”
More lions, fewer prey
CDFW estimates there are up to 40 mountain lions in San Benito County in a habitat of 1,390 square miles or 893,440 acres. In contrast, there are up to 100 lions in Santa Cruz County, with a habitat of 607 square miles or 388,480 acres. Santa Cruz has a much higher lion density, according to the Puma Project, mainly due to richer habitat, more cover from redwood and evergreen forests, moist canyons and a more stable deer population.
There has not been an active long-term collaring monitoring program in San Benito County, so the number of lions is only an estimate. This is partly because the county is considered a movement corridor through the Gabilan and Diablo ranges. There are far fewer lions in San Benito County, according to CDFW, primarily because it is dominated by dry oak savanna, chaparral, open rangeland and large agricultural valleys.
Mountain lion prey in San Benito County is mainly black tailed deer but that population has declined over the past 20 years. A herd of 21 Tule Elk was introduced into the Diablo Range, east of Hollister in 1983, to protect genetic diversity and “to establish a new free‑ranging herd as part of the statewide tule elk restoration and repopulation program,” according to CDFW. Since then, the herd has spread east into Merced and Fresno Counties, and south into the Panoche and Ciervo Hills.
Deer are easier kills for mountain lions because they’re smaller and tend to graze alone. Elk, however, are much larger, often weighing 500 or more pounds, and they run in large herds, which makes them more of a challenge for lion predation.
California’s deer population, according to CDFW, has dropped from 850,000 in 1990 to 475,000 in 2023. The primary causes, according to CDFW, are habitat loss and degradation, drought and climate stress. The agency also said the state’s longstanding “bucks‑only” hunting policy has created demographic imbalances that reduce reproductive potential.
However, local ranchers and officials in San Benito County have long argued that deer numbers have fallen sharply because mountain lion populations have increased under state protection policies.
In 2009, Agriculture Commissioner Paul Matulich told sanbenito.com that he was “100 percent confident” lion sightings and livestock attacks had risen and warned that deer were increasingly at risk under California’s predator‑management restrictions.
That same week, long-time Panoche Valley rancher Charlie McCullough told the Gilroy Dispatch that lion encounters on his ranch had become far more common and that this rise “correlates with a steady decline” in deer, noting a drop from just over 50,000 deer in 1963 to 5,000 to 6,000, based on modern harvest data.
While mountain lions remain the primary predator of deer statewide, human development, including suburban expansion, fencing, roads, and vehicle collisions have reduced habitat connectivity.
Facing genetic challenges
Mills said the recently approved move to list mountain lions as an endangered California species is mainly in response to genetic challenges they face from being constrained to certain areas because of roads. While the females don’t roam to a large degree, he said males disperse over a vast landscape with one male mating with multiple females.
“Males will go and establish their home range that gives them the most breeding opportunities,” he said. “When you constrain those by these linear barriers like roads, oftentimes when they attempt to disperse they’re struck by vehicles, so they’re not appropriately linking the populations.”
He said Hwy 101 is a distinct barrier which causes most of the fatalities among young male lions, though some females have also been killed.
“We deal with a lot of mountain lion-vehicle collisions along those roadways that constrain their connectivity,” he said. “They were petitioned to be listed as an endangered species, largely in response to these distinct population segments that occur pretty much from the Bay Area all the way to New Mexico, as humans have expanded their settlements and made roads that have more and more traffic and concrete barriers that these mountain lions can’t pass, which effectively isolates them into populations.”
Land trust devoted to conservation
Lynn Overtree, Executive Director of the San Benito Agriculture Land Trust, said that while she is aware of ranchers’ concerns about the possibility of more mountain lions coming into the county and their predation of the ranchers’ cattle, she was clear that the primary concern for the nonprofit organization is working with ranchers and farmers to permanently protect land from development while keeping it as much as possible in private ownership and agricultural use.
Overtree said the land trust does, however, play a role in regional conservation strategies that include wildlife movement.
“Of course, agricultural land is beneficial for wildlife when it’s rangeland, to some degree,” she said. “We’re helping wildlife through natural processes like burning and flooding that help keep the landscape healthy.”
She said the land trust’s work is not meant to encourage more mountain lions to come to San Benito County.
“In fact, one of the main reasons for this corridor and the linkage is to get more mountain lions up to the Santa Cruz Mountains,” she said. “They have a bottleneck up there. They have a problem with diversity in their gene pool. I know that is a fact. They’ve done the genetic studies and there’s less diversity of genes up there.”
Anecdotally, Overtree said she has heard that some ranchers have lost calves to mountain lions but couldn’t pinpoint where the ranches are located. As far as the prevailing attitudes of ranchers concerning mountain lions, she said some are ambivalent about their presence, while others would prefer there not be any lions.
Anyone’s guess how many lions roam the county
Of the 20 to 40 mountain lions CDFW estimates are in the county, Russell Tobias, 29, part owner of the Tobias Ranch near Tres Pinos, said he grew up in the county and has never seen a mountain lion. Another rancher who lives near the Tobias property, though, said he has seen at least two.
Jack Clark, 79, however, said there are at least three lions and possibly more where he has worked for over 20 years providing security for several large ranches near Hwy 25 as it meanders through Bear Valley between Paicines and Pinnacles National Park. Over the years, he has placed trail cameras on the ranches that serve a dual purpose: sometimes they catch trespassers, mostly hikers. Sometimes, the people are more ominous.
“If they’re just hikers I ask them to leave,” he said. “If they’re cartel-type dope growers, I will get law enforcement involved. I try not to have any interaction with those types of people.”
Quite often, though, the cameras capture—mostly at night—skittish deer, bobcats, turkeys, coyotes, and the occasional mountain lion. More than once, a female lion with her cubs showed up at a cattle water trough and helped themselves.
Coexisting with ranchers
Mills said he works with ranchers in the county who allow him to come on their properties.
“There are some ranchers who do outstanding jobs of collaborating and working together with Fish & Wildlife, even if we have different philosophies, we have great working relationships,” he said. “I do emphasize coexistence. I have experience with human-wildlife conflicts in Africa and my approach in general is coexistence and trying to build empathy with animals that are living in locations where humans are encroaching upon their habitat.”
He explained further: “As human ranges expand, animal ranges shrink. If we don’t have strategies grounded in coexistence, it’s not going to work out. I do emphasize that I grew up in a small agricultural community, so I am sensitive to wildlife conflict. My goal is to build these strategies based on empathy for animals and understanding that the strongest ecosystems are ones where we do have these complete guilds of animals. They’re stable. They’re resilient. And that’s what I strive for as a biologist.”
Resources
California now prohibits all sport hunting of mountain lions but allows limited lethal control under specific circumstances. Under the recent protection, though, there are extra layers of review and restrictions, but they do not eliminate the authority for lethal control. CDFW coordinates or supports research across multiple counties, including:
- Mountain Lion Connectivity on the Central Coast—tracking and connectivity research in Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, Monterey, San Benito and San Luis Obispo counties
- Mountain Lion Occurrence in Southeastern California—monitoring in Inyo, San Bernardino, Riverside and Imperial counties
- Other statewide projects use GPS collar data along with genetics and camera traps to understand population dynamics across many regions of the state.
Important legal landmarks include
- Proposition 117 (1990), passed by voters to designate mountain lions as a specially protected mammal and ban sport hunting, with exceptions to protect public safety, livestock, and other wildlife
- Depredation permits—Landowners can apply to CDFW for permission to kill a lion that has repeatedly killed livestock or pets, or if there’s an imminent threat
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