A rare sight today of a mountain lion near I5 in Lake Forest! While it's common for mountain lions to roam throughout the Santa Ana Mountains, it's very uncommon for them to stray far from those mountains, in this case in the city right next to a very busy freeway. Originally it was unconfirmed on whether or not it was a mountain lion or bobcat because they get confused so often here but video surveillance from a parking garage at Comfort Inn confirms the sighting.

Showing up in this location is leaving people to wonder how this mountain lion got so far into the city without being detected by anyone else but there's a likely reason this happened. If you look on Google maps, you can see a good stretch of undeveloped land coming from the Santa Ana Mountains. This stretch of land crosses under the 241 and eventually down along the southeast end of Great Park. If the lion continues on this path avoiding developments and people, the only way is through the fields adjacent to I5 and eventually forces the lion into the Irvine Auto Center area. From there, the mountain lion is at the intersection of Lake Forest and Rockfield where he was first spotted near the gas stations and then caught on video surveillance at Comfort Inn. After that, he was spotted at Mountain View Park which as of now remains to be the last place he was seen. It's highly likely that he found a hiding spot between houses or in someones backyard and will keep moving tonight.

The video shows a juvenile male mountain lion which makes perfect sense. In a land where human development just never ends, this juvenile male who recently dispersed from his mother is just looking for his own territory. We've seen this several times before and the fact is that there is just nowhere else for them to go. To make matters worse, humans are still developing into their habitat more and more every year.

It is not likely that this mountain lion will be able to find his way back into the wilderness now without human intervention and hopefully that can happen before he gets hit by a vehicle or has any bad interactions with humans or their pets. The people that live in this area aren't used to having mountain lions around so hopefully all goes well for all beings.

For a video, click here