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Experts Claim Wildfires Are Forcing Mountain Lions Into California Neighborhoods

(SHUTTERSTOCK: By Warren Metcalf)

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Chris White Tech Reporter
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Natural disaster experts are suggesting wildfires on the border of Northern California might be causing mountain lions to move deeper into the state’s highly urbanized areas.

Surveillance video captured two cougars lurking on the patio of the Young family in northeastern Poway. The cats walked up to their home shortly after midnight on July 22.

“It was a little scary. I had just been out on a run the night before,” Amy Young told a local Fox News channel. The video shows one of them pawing at the front door while the other slinks around the front end of the house.

Natural disasters expert Pat Abbott claims the visit might have been a result of the so-called Carr Wildfire, which has killed six people since it first began earlier in July. (RELATED: The Media Is Predictably (And Incorrectly) Linking Wildfires To Global Warming)

“Do I think wildfires are pushing mountain lions out of their territories into the cities? Certainly. Do I have the data? No, but it only makes sense,” Abbott told reporters. “Nobody else comes into their territory and that could be 10 square miles, that could be 100 square miles.”

“Now, you take all these conditions where we have these massive wildfires and you burn thousands and thousands of acres, that means there are mountain lions that are being pushed out of their territory,” he added.

Media talking heads have consistently blamed global warming for what they believe is an uptick in wildfires. Wildfire experts say human land management practices and encroachment of development into wildfire-prone areas overwhelms any signal from global warming.

Most fires are in fact cause by humans. The Carr Fire, for example, was caused by the “mechanical failure” of a vehicle, officials said. Earlier in 2018, California authorities announced that 12 major fires that raged across wine country in 2017 were caused by “electric power and distribution lines, conductors and the failure of power poles,” not global warming.

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