SAN DIEGO (Border Report) — In the high desert about 100 miles south of the border, a wilderness camera set up by Baja California’ Environment Protection Agency captured the moment a cougar pounced on a ram at a watering hole.
The video shows the cat on the back of the ram biting down on its neck before wrestling the big horn sheep to the ground and away from the small pond.
A motion detection camera recorded the encounter last month, but the images were only released to the media this week.
Volunteers have set up a number of these recording devices in a protected wilderness reserve near San Quintín, Baja California as a way to monitor the area.
“This register is not only exciting, but it confirms an ancestral balance that remains alive, something that deserves to be protected,” wrote a Baja official on the state’s social media page.
Cougars, or pumas as they are also called, once roamed throughout Mexico, but are now rarely seen in the wild as their numbers have declined in recent decades.
The state official said the video shows “the ecosystem is functioning correctly.”
“A territory with pumas is a territory that thrives.”
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