By Maria Caspani
(Reuters) – A mountain lion killed a 21-year-old man and seriously injured his younger brother on Saturday in the Sierra Nevada foothills of northern California, marking the first fatal attack by a puma in the state in 20 years, officials said. authority.
The two brothers were attacked while they were collecting deer antlers in a remote wooded area near Georgetown, a former gold rush mining camp in El Dorado County northeast of Sacramento, the state capital, the state capital said. county sheriff’s office.
The 18-year-old brother, who was separated from his brother during the attack, was able to call for help despite suffering traumatic injuries to his face, the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
A short time later, sheriff’s deputies searching for his older brother found the mountain lion crouching near his body on the ground and fired to scare the animal away.
State and county game wardens summoned to the area tracked the lion later in the day and killed it, the sheriff’s office said in a statement released Saturday.
The lion’s remains were sent to a forensic laboratory to obtain DNA and other information about the animal.
In an update Sunday, the sheriff’s office said the younger brother has undergone several surgeries for his injuries and is expected to make a full recovery. But the names of the two victims remain confidential.
Mountain lions, also known as cougars or cougars, are largely solitary predators that range widely across the western United States and Canada, feeding primarily on deer and rodents.
They mostly avoid humans, and attacks on people are relatively rare, although interactions have become more frequent as urban sprawl increasingly encroaches on their natural habitat.
Saturday’s incident marked the first fatal encounter between a mountain lion and a human in California since January 2004, when a man was attacked in the Orange County foothills, south of Los Angeles, while riding his bicycle across a park, according to state Fish and Wildlife Department Statistics.