LOMPOC VALLEY - A grassroots effort to rescue a sick bobcat from State Park property at the La Purisima Mission in the Lompoc Valley has ended with the fate of the wild cat unknown.
The La Purisima Mission in the Lompoc Valley is a stunning historic landmark that sits on 2,000 acres of sprawling natural landscape that is also a California State Park.
"The Park provides habitat for the wildlife", says supervising State Park ranger Theresa Armas, "so it's a place they call home where they can come and seek food and water so we're happy to provide habitat for wildlife."
Pictures and video of the bobcat taken on the grounds of the Mission in the past several weeks inspired an effort to try and save the wild cat from what some saw was an unnecessarily slow death.
One of those involved was Julia Di Sieno of the Santa Ynez-based Animal Rescue Team, Inc. which routinely handles bobcats, rehabilitates them and releases them back into the wild.
"A lot of bobcats are surfacing with mange symptoms because of rodenticide poisoning", Di Sieno says, "meaning ingestion of a tainted rat."
The sick bobcat has been spotted by people who walk miles of trails around the Mission every day.
Animal Rescue Team and others trying to save the cat were told to apply for a permit from State Parks before they could come out and trap the animal.
Park rangers even detained people who came out anyway without the permit.
Then this week word came down the permit was being denied.
State Parks says it just doesn't operate that way.
"We let nature take its course without any intervention from man", Ranger Armas says, "the animals are born, live and die without our intervention and that's just what they do."
Di Sieno says she thinks the bobcat has died.
She says she wants to work with State Parks in the future to help other distressed wildlife in the Lompoc Valley.
State Parks says its policies and guidelines do not allow for the removal of injured, sick or dead animals by the public or any other outside organization.
It says an exception in this case was not warranted.
