A mountain lion was spotted Friday afternoon in the area of 44th Avenue and Ulloa Street in San Francisco's Outer Sunset neighborhood, prompting police to warn nearby residents to stay calm and keep their distance. Animal Care and Control officers were already on scene as the alert went out, and officials urged anyone who encounters the animal to slowly back away rather than run.
The sighting, first announced in a post from San Francisco Police
, placed the cougar roughly three blocks east of Ocean Beach and about a mile north of the San Francisco Zoo near Sloat Boulevard, according to
SFGATE
. Anyone who spots the animal is asked to call Animal Care and Control at 415-554-9400, while those facing a life-threatening emergency should call 911. Police also advised adults with children nearby to pick the kids up immediately, and told anyone with a dog to keep it on a leash.
If the mountain lion approaches, San Francisco Police instructed people to make themselves look as big as possible, shout, wave their arms, and throw something in the animal's direction — but never run. The San Francisco Department of Emergency Management echoed that guidance in the public safety alerts it dispatched after the sighting, per SFGATE's reporting.
A Second San Francisco Sighting in Two Weeks
Friday's encounter comes just two weeks after a mountain lion was spotted in a tree near Fell and Baker streets in the Panhandle, an incident Hoodline covered in our earlier report on the Panhandle cougar. That animal left the area on its own by the following day, according to the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management. San Francisco Animal Care and Control officials have noted that the agency fields multiple mountain lion sighting reports every year, but most of the animals wander back out of the city on their own without needing to be captured or relocated, as the same officials told the San Francisco Standard.
Not every case ends that quietly. In January, San Francisco emergency crews, animal control officers, zoo veterinarians and state wildlife officials cornered and tranquilized a 77-pound juvenile male mountain lion that had been roaming Lower Pacific Heights, ultimately relocating the animal to wild habitat outside the city, according to KQED. In May 2021, a 2-year-old male mountain lion found in Bernal Heights was tranquilized by state wildlife officers, examined at the Oakland Zoo, and later released in Santa Clara County, per KTVU FOX 2. And back in June 2020, a juvenile male cougar was safely pulled from a planter box in downtown San Francisco near the Financial District and Embarcadero before being relocated to open land in Santa Clara County.
Why Young Cougars Keep Turning Up in the City
Research on Bay Area cougar ecology suggests these urban wanderers tend to be young, dispersing males following coastal or greenway corridors — like the Presidio, Golden Gate Park, or Ocean Beach itself — as they search for new territory and mates, a pattern Hoodline explored in an earlier piece on regional mountain lion movement. That dynamic helps explain why cougars keep showing up along San Francisco's western and northern edges rather than deep inland.
State law shapes how officials are allowed to respond once a lion turns up. Mountain lions have been classified as a specially protected mammal in California since voters approved Proposition 117 in 1990, a law that banned sport hunting of cougars statewide while still permitting non-lethal management or removal when public safety is at stake, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. In February, the California Fish and Game Commission unanimously voted to list Central Coast and Southern California mountain lion populations as threatened under the California Endangered Species Act, citing habitat fragmentation and urban development risks — a decision that further tilts official response toward non-lethal capture and relocation whenever it's feasible.
As of Friday afternoon, it remained unclear whether the Outer Sunset mountain lion would leave San Francisco on its own, as the Panhandle lion did earlier this month, or whether it would require the kind of multi-agency tranquilization and relocation effort seen in Pacific Heights and Bernal Heights. Residents in the area are asked to heed the same guidance issued after each of the city's recent sightings: keep dogs leashed, keep children close, and give the animal room to move on.
