WawonaNews.com - January 2025
Urgent – Support WAPPOA’s Effort to Retain WTPAC
At the January 21, 2025 County Board of Supervisor’s 9:00 meeting, the Board’s agenda includes consideration of an action to eliminate planning advisory committees including Wawona Town Planning Advisory Committee (WTPAC). In Wawona, the federal government (NPS) has jurisdictional authority over local public safety, water, sewer, development and other services. WTPAC was established to give the community a voice in Mariposa county-federal (NPS) governance. You can submit comments on the impacts of WTPAC elimination to the Board by going to the County’s Agendas and Minutes and clicking on the meeting.
Here is how to log on to the County website and to email your comments
Go to the Mariposa County Website (www.mariposacounty.org), then click on Government-top left
H. Regular Agenda, 8. Discussion and Direction on Oversight, Organization, Cost, Continuance, and Purpose of County Committees, Commissions, Boards, Councils, Community Working Groups, and Task Forces
(Supervisor Smallcombe)
Here are some suggested comments that you might like to make
At the January 21, 2025 County Board of Supervisor’s 9:00 meeting, the Board’s agenda includes consideration of an action to eliminate planning advisory committees including Wawona Town Planning Advisory Committee (WTPAC). In Wawona, the federal government (NPS) has jurisdictional authority over local public safety, water, sewer, development and other services. WTPAC was established to give the community a voice in Mariposa county-federal (NPS) governance. You can submit comments on the impacts of WTPAC elimination to the Board by going to the County’s Agendas and Minutes and clicking on the meeting.
Here is how to log on to the County website and to email your comments
Go to the Mariposa County Website (www.mariposacounty.org), then click on Government-top left
- click on Agendas and Minutes
- scroll down to find and click on the January 21st meeting
- click on "Meeting Files" and the Agenda will load on screen
- then click on "submit comments" icon to left. It will ask your name and the title and agenda item--Fill in the above text in bold.
- type in your comments and press submit.
H. Regular Agenda, 8. Discussion and Direction on Oversight, Organization, Cost, Continuance, and Purpose of County Committees, Commissions, Boards, Councils, Community Working Groups, and Task Forces
(Supervisor Smallcombe)
Here are some suggested comments that you might like to make
As a property owner in Wawona, I am strongly opposed to the elimination of the Wawona Town Planning Advisory Committee (WTPAC) on the Boards January 21st Agenda. It would be a horrible disservice to the hundreds of property owners in Wawona.
- Wawona is different from other unincorporated areas of the County because the federal government has jurisdictional authority over local public safety, water, sewer, development and other services.
- WTPAC plays a vital advisory and consultation role--enacted in the zoning and governance MOU-- advising the Board of Supervisors on local services and development.
- This is extremely critical in the current environment where NPS is taking actions and positions that may fail to protect Wawona residents, guests and property owners. Outcomes will directly impact property values and the County’s tax base in Wawona.
- We acknowledge that WTPAC may need new members to ensure a regular quorum; and, the community is committed to recruiting new Members.
Update on Our Beloved School Teacher, Stacy
As you may have heard, Stacy has been battling stage 4 colon cancer since last summer. She has been through a lot with surgery and chemo. She has now entered Hospice in Fresno and her sister and children have been there. Her dear friend, Connie Wylie, has reported that she is clear eyed and strong throughout this process. She is even allowed to have her dear companion, Lucia (her dog), visit her and that alone brings her great happiness and peace.
If you would like to send a card, here is the address:
Stacy Boydstun
Hinds Hospice
1416 West Twain Ave
Fresno CA 93711
Stacy has been a great Montessori teacher and has provided fantastic learning projects, fun experiences, and amazing trips for all her students. She has truly been a ray of light for our community. Please keep her, her family and students in your prayers.
As you may have heard, Stacy has been battling stage 4 colon cancer since last summer. She has been through a lot with surgery and chemo. She has now entered Hospice in Fresno and her sister and children have been there. Her dear friend, Connie Wylie, has reported that she is clear eyed and strong throughout this process. She is even allowed to have her dear companion, Lucia (her dog), visit her and that alone brings her great happiness and peace.
If you would like to send a card, here is the address:
Stacy Boydstun
Hinds Hospice
1416 West Twain Ave
Fresno CA 93711
Stacy has been a great Montessori teacher and has provided fantastic learning projects, fun experiences, and amazing trips for all her students. She has truly been a ray of light for our community. Please keep her, her family and students in your prayers.
YOSEMITE-WAWONA ELEMENTARY CHARTER SCHOOL
Board of Directors Regular Meeting
Tuesday, January 14, 2025
5:30 P.M.
Wawona Elementary School
7925 Chilnualna Falls Road
Wawona, CA
MONTHLY ITEMS AND FINANCIAL REPORTS
3.1- Approval of Agenda
3.2– Approval of Minutes of the regular meeting of December 10
3.3 - Approve Warrants/Payroll
3.4 – Accept Donations to YWECS
ACTION ITEMS
INFORMATION ITEMS
Board of Directors Regular Meeting
Tuesday, January 14, 2025
5:30 P.M.
Wawona Elementary School
7925 Chilnualna Falls Road
Wawona, CA
- CALL TO ORDER
- ROLL CALL
MONTHLY ITEMS AND FINANCIAL REPORTS
- CONSENT AGENDA
3.1- Approval of Agenda
3.2– Approval of Minutes of the regular meeting of December 10
3.3 - Approve Warrants/Payroll
3.4 – Accept Donations to YWECS
- HEARING OF PERSONS WISHING TO ADDRESS THE BOARD
ACTION ITEMS
- APPROVAL OF THE 2023-2024 AUDIT REPORT FINDINGS
- APPROVAL OF THE 2023-24 School Accountability Report Card (SARC)
- APPROVAL OF P-1 ATTENDANCE REPORT
INFORMATION ITEMS
- STAFF REPORTS
- BUILDINGS AND GROUNDS PROJECTS UPDATE
- FUNDRAISING EFFORTS
- BOARD MEMBER COMMENTS
- FUTURE AGENDA ITEMS
- NEXT BOARD MEETING
- ADJOURNMENT
Diane Mello Obituary
Diane Mello died on November 12, 2024 after a short illness at her home in San Ramon. Diane had a long history with Wawona. She first visited Wawona as a young child with her family when they came to stay with her aunt and uncle at their cabin on Koon Hollar. She had many fond memories of her many visits with Aunt Emily and Uncle George. As an adult she worked at the Wawona Hotel, the Wawona library, and the Wawona school. She lived for many years in Oakhurst and would frequently go to Wawona to hike the Meadow Loop and the bridge to bridge loop, and visit with family and friends. Among her close Wawona friends were Wawona Washburn, Burrell Maier, Heidi Haley, and her cousins Gary Bocarde and Susan Havens.
Diane Mello died on November 12, 2024 after a short illness at her home in San Ramon. Diane had a long history with Wawona. She first visited Wawona as a young child with her family when they came to stay with her aunt and uncle at their cabin on Koon Hollar. She had many fond memories of her many visits with Aunt Emily and Uncle George. As an adult she worked at the Wawona Hotel, the Wawona library, and the Wawona school. She lived for many years in Oakhurst and would frequently go to Wawona to hike the Meadow Loop and the bridge to bridge loop, and visit with family and friends. Among her close Wawona friends were Wawona Washburn, Burrell Maier, Heidi Haley, and her cousins Gary Bocarde and Susan Havens.
A marker near where Taylen and Wyatt Brooks were attacked by a mountain lion. Credit...Nicholas Albrecht for The New York Times
The New York Times Magazine
A Mountain Lion Attacked My Nephews. What Could Have Stopped It?
As dangerous encounters in California continue to rise, local residents and wildlife experts are trying to figure out how humans and big cats can coexist.
By Malcolm Brooks
Taylen, 21, and Wyatt, 18, grew up fully immersed in the outdoors, in a largely rural part of El Dorado County’s Sierra foothills, hunting deer and turkeys, quail and ducks, and fishing for bass and trout. On the afternoon of the attack, they had gone out in pursuit of shed deer antlers, a springtime ritual that resulted over the years in mountains of prongs and tines in the boys’ bedroom, garage and shed, each specimen meticulously labeled with the date and location of the find.
It was Wyatt who glimpsed the movement first, out of the corner of his eye. He was walking on the uphill side of the road, no more than five minutes out of the car, scanning the slope for the telltale jut of a fallen antler. When his head ratcheted around to take in the scene, a young male lion came into view no more than 10 yards away, walking almost casually in their direction.
Taylen, just behind his brother and off to the side, was scanning the lower slope for antlers and still unaware of the cat’s presence. Wyatt said his brother’s name, and both boys immediately followed the standard procedure for lion encounters: arms above their heads to appear larger, shouting and yelling while backing slowly away.
The lion kept coming, eyes locked and pads gaining ground. When the distance closed to a matter of feet, Wyatt hurled his backpack, grazing the cat’s face. The lion never paused, never seemed to react.
Then Wyatt tripped on a stick and fell backward. The cat launched, pouncing on him as he hit the ground. The upper fangs sank into Wyatt’s left cheek, just below his eye socket, the lower into his top lip and right nostril, flaying his face in four separate places.
Later, in the hospital, Wyatt told his father, my brother, that the cat appeared “huge.” In reality, it was half-grown at around 90 pounds — large enough to present a deadly threat, but not so big as to prevent my nephew from flipping it on its back and pulling its head away from his own, both hands clutching the lion’s throat. The cat went berserk, grabbing with its front claws and raking with its rear, in the way all felines use their haunches to eviscerate prey.
A Mountain Lion Attacked My Nephews. What Could Have Stopped It?
As dangerous encounters in California continue to rise, local residents and wildlife experts are trying to figure out how humans and big cats can coexist.
By Malcolm Brooks
- Dec. 31, 2024
Taylen, 21, and Wyatt, 18, grew up fully immersed in the outdoors, in a largely rural part of El Dorado County’s Sierra foothills, hunting deer and turkeys, quail and ducks, and fishing for bass and trout. On the afternoon of the attack, they had gone out in pursuit of shed deer antlers, a springtime ritual that resulted over the years in mountains of prongs and tines in the boys’ bedroom, garage and shed, each specimen meticulously labeled with the date and location of the find.
It was Wyatt who glimpsed the movement first, out of the corner of his eye. He was walking on the uphill side of the road, no more than five minutes out of the car, scanning the slope for the telltale jut of a fallen antler. When his head ratcheted around to take in the scene, a young male lion came into view no more than 10 yards away, walking almost casually in their direction.
Taylen, just behind his brother and off to the side, was scanning the lower slope for antlers and still unaware of the cat’s presence. Wyatt said his brother’s name, and both boys immediately followed the standard procedure for lion encounters: arms above their heads to appear larger, shouting and yelling while backing slowly away.
The lion kept coming, eyes locked and pads gaining ground. When the distance closed to a matter of feet, Wyatt hurled his backpack, grazing the cat’s face. The lion never paused, never seemed to react.
Then Wyatt tripped on a stick and fell backward. The cat launched, pouncing on him as he hit the ground. The upper fangs sank into Wyatt’s left cheek, just below his eye socket, the lower into his top lip and right nostril, flaying his face in four separate places.
Later, in the hospital, Wyatt told his father, my brother, that the cat appeared “huge.” In reality, it was half-grown at around 90 pounds — large enough to present a deadly threat, but not so big as to prevent my nephew from flipping it on its back and pulling its head away from his own, both hands clutching the lion’s throat. The cat went berserk, grabbing with its front claws and raking with its rear, in the way all felines use their haunches to eviscerate prey.
Wyatt Brooks received significant reconstructive surgery on his face following the attack. Credit...Nicholas Albrecht for The New York Times
Wyatt had no choice but to spin away. The instant he did, the cat went for his brother. From Wyatt’s perspective, Taylen’s face disappeared behind the cat’s head as its jaws locked around his brother’s neck. He saw that Taylen’s hands were underneath the lion’s head, as if trying to grasp its throat the way Wyatt had. Wyatt then jumped onto the cat’s back. “I grabbed it by the neck again and tried to pull it off, but I couldn’t. No matter how hard I tried, it just wouldn’t let go.”
Even in his own frenzied panic, Wyatt realized Taylen’s arms had gone limp, and that the situation could only get worse. As he backed away, two thoughts flashed in his mind: Call for help and go for the car, on the off chance he could somehow use it to scare the animal away. He reached for his phone, found it was no longer in his pocket, then spotted it in the dirt. By the time he picked it up, the lion was dragging Taylen over the edge of the road, back into the brush from which it emerged.
Wyatt tried to dial 911 but couldn’t, his hands slick with blood on the phone screen. When he finally succeeded, the responder had no idea what to tell him, other than to stay in the car. With the dispatcher still on the line, Wyatt drove to the scene of the attack, marked now only by the backpack he’d flung moments earlier.
Fifteen minutes later a pair of deputies roared up, followed by an ambulance. The deputies spotted the drag trail through the brush and followed it to the cat, still crouched over Taylen’s body.
They shot at the ground to scare the lion away. Instead it rushed the deputies, who again tried another warning barrage. It flinched, then attempted another charge. The deputies shot into the ground yet again, and the lion finally vanished into the brush.
El Dorado County lies at the heart of California Gold Rush country, in the Sierra foothills just east of Sacramento. Growing up there in the ’80s, my brother and I, much like my nephews, hunted deer and quail and doves. Once wild turkeys began to proliferate, we expanded what had been an autumn passion into the green of springtime, the traditional season for gobbler hunting.
Everybody knew the mountain lions were around, but back then daytime sightings were rare. We would sometimes hear a lion scream in the dusk, a bloodcurdling sound, in the canyon behind our house. Occasionally somebody would glimpse one in their headlights on some winding mountain road. But we never went into the woods with any thought that we might be in danger ourselves, because at the time, as far as typical lion behavior went, we weren’t.
For most of the 20th century, the only known human deaths from a lion in California occurred in 1909, when a rabid animal attacked two people. (They survived the actual encounter but died later from rabies.) In that era, apex predators were largely viewed as having no ecological benefit, and California paid a bounty for lions, employing up to five state-funded professional hunters. That system continued until 1963, when the species was classified as vermin, except there were no longer cash rewards and also no limit to the number of lions that could be killed. No records were kept on how many actually were.
By the end of the decade, however, concerns grew that lions might be nearing extinction. The decline had been noted not just by animal-welfare advocates but by recreational hunters. At the time, the latter used dogs to trail lions by scent, and in response, the lions would climb trees to escape. Often, the dogs would be pulled away, an exercise referred to as “tree and free.” In 1969, in an effort to preserve the population, lions came under the protection of the California Department of Fish and Game, and in 1971, Governor Ronald Reagan signed a kill moratorium. Pursuit permits would still be issued to allow hound-handlers to tree the big cats, in part as a form of data collection to establish a population count.
In 1985, the number of livestock killed by lions, or what stock producers call depredations — a figure that had remained in the single- or double-digits for decades — increased to nearly 150. A similar number was recorded the following year, as well as the first attacks on humans in nearly eight decades: Two children, ages 5 and 6, were mauled months apart in the same wilderness park in Orange County. In response, the state lifted the kill moratorium, with the intention of establishing a quota-based hunting season.
But in 1990 — the year I turned 20 — voters passed Proposition 117 by ballot measure, designating the mountain lion a “specially protected mammal.” Lions would be shielded from lethal hunting, and for the first time in California history, turning a hound onto a cat’s trail became a criminal offense. Grizzlies and wolves had long been eradicated, leaving only hound-assisted humans as the mountain lion’s singular, top-of-the-food-chain competitor. With this final external pressure essentially eliminated (exceptions were made for scientific study and livestock kills), those of us in the rural foothills began to notice changes.
Depredations climbed. Our longtime neighbor, a man whose ranch had been in his family for generations, lost a couple of sheep in his pasture — a first. More strikingly, people all over the county were actually seeing mountain lions, not only in their high beams at night but in broad daylight, with increasing regularity: crossing the road, loafing at the edge of a fenced field, skirting a campground. My brother experienced the shock of having one run into the side of his pickup one afternoon, deflect away, and bound off into the brush.
The shift in lion behavior wasn’t unique to El Dorado County. In 1992, a 9-year-old boy on a bike ride near Santa Barbara was mauled by a young lion, resulting in more than 600 stitches. In ’93, Cuyamaca Rancho State Park near San Diego closed for several weeks after multiple visitors had too-close-for-comfort encounters. The weekend after reopening, a lion walked into a campground and bit a 10-year-old girl before being driven off by the family dog, which was also mauled. Park rangers shot and killed the lion.
Then, in April 1994, Barbara Schoener disappeared while jogging in El Dorado County, 10 miles from where Taylen and Wyatt were attacked. Her partially consumed body was discovered the next day — neck bitten and skull crushed — in a mound of debris. Schoener became the first lion fatality in California since 1909. Eight months later, another woman was killed in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, where the 10-year-old camper was attacked. In the interim, three other lions were also euthanized in Cuyamaca, after showing aggressive behavior toward humans.
With livestock attacks also steadily increasing, the Department of Fish and Game began to issue more depredation permits. Between 1995 and 2019, well over 100 lions on average were killed annually. Then, in 2020, a statewide directive changed the equation again. The new policy generally allowed multiple attacks by a lion on any given parcel of land before a lethal permit would be issued.
Whether by coincidence or as a direct result, six attacks on humans occurred between 2020 and 2022, all nonfatal and all but one targeting small children. Certain regions of the state, meanwhile, became hot zones of lion activity — out of 31 lethal depredation permits approved statewide in 2023, twelve were in my home county. Three hours west in San Mateo County, a 5-year-old survived an attack on a hiking trail. Soon, the incident with Taylen and Wyatt would mark the first death in two decades.
I graduated in the same high-school class as a kid named John Chandler. We didn’t know each other well then and had no way of predicting how fate would one day connect us. Like me, Chandler grew up hunting and fishing in the heart of California Gold Rush Country. He turned that passion for the outdoors into a career as the El Dorado County Wildlife Specialist, or county trapper. Any time an agricultural producer or horse owner or home gardener has a persistent issue with dangerous or destructive animals — skunks denning under a shed, raccoons raiding a chicken coop, bears gorging in a vineyard — Chandler can assist, either with advice or, if necessary, direct intervention. Over the past few years, more and more cases have involved mountain lions.
“I was skiing when the first call came through,” Chandler told me, about the day my nephews were attacked. It wasn’t a typical weekend contact from a dispatcher or general citizen — this was a call from Jeff Leikauf, the El Dorado County Sheriff, stating that a lion attack had just been reported, that he didn’t have all the details but needed Chandler to get down the hill from Tahoe.
Even in his own frenzied panic, Wyatt realized Taylen’s arms had gone limp, and that the situation could only get worse. As he backed away, two thoughts flashed in his mind: Call for help and go for the car, on the off chance he could somehow use it to scare the animal away. He reached for his phone, found it was no longer in his pocket, then spotted it in the dirt. By the time he picked it up, the lion was dragging Taylen over the edge of the road, back into the brush from which it emerged.
Wyatt tried to dial 911 but couldn’t, his hands slick with blood on the phone screen. When he finally succeeded, the responder had no idea what to tell him, other than to stay in the car. With the dispatcher still on the line, Wyatt drove to the scene of the attack, marked now only by the backpack he’d flung moments earlier.
Fifteen minutes later a pair of deputies roared up, followed by an ambulance. The deputies spotted the drag trail through the brush and followed it to the cat, still crouched over Taylen’s body.
They shot at the ground to scare the lion away. Instead it rushed the deputies, who again tried another warning barrage. It flinched, then attempted another charge. The deputies shot into the ground yet again, and the lion finally vanished into the brush.
El Dorado County lies at the heart of California Gold Rush country, in the Sierra foothills just east of Sacramento. Growing up there in the ’80s, my brother and I, much like my nephews, hunted deer and quail and doves. Once wild turkeys began to proliferate, we expanded what had been an autumn passion into the green of springtime, the traditional season for gobbler hunting.
Everybody knew the mountain lions were around, but back then daytime sightings were rare. We would sometimes hear a lion scream in the dusk, a bloodcurdling sound, in the canyon behind our house. Occasionally somebody would glimpse one in their headlights on some winding mountain road. But we never went into the woods with any thought that we might be in danger ourselves, because at the time, as far as typical lion behavior went, we weren’t.
For most of the 20th century, the only known human deaths from a lion in California occurred in 1909, when a rabid animal attacked two people. (They survived the actual encounter but died later from rabies.) In that era, apex predators were largely viewed as having no ecological benefit, and California paid a bounty for lions, employing up to five state-funded professional hunters. That system continued until 1963, when the species was classified as vermin, except there were no longer cash rewards and also no limit to the number of lions that could be killed. No records were kept on how many actually were.
By the end of the decade, however, concerns grew that lions might be nearing extinction. The decline had been noted not just by animal-welfare advocates but by recreational hunters. At the time, the latter used dogs to trail lions by scent, and in response, the lions would climb trees to escape. Often, the dogs would be pulled away, an exercise referred to as “tree and free.” In 1969, in an effort to preserve the population, lions came under the protection of the California Department of Fish and Game, and in 1971, Governor Ronald Reagan signed a kill moratorium. Pursuit permits would still be issued to allow hound-handlers to tree the big cats, in part as a form of data collection to establish a population count.
In 1985, the number of livestock killed by lions, or what stock producers call depredations — a figure that had remained in the single- or double-digits for decades — increased to nearly 150. A similar number was recorded the following year, as well as the first attacks on humans in nearly eight decades: Two children, ages 5 and 6, were mauled months apart in the same wilderness park in Orange County. In response, the state lifted the kill moratorium, with the intention of establishing a quota-based hunting season.
But in 1990 — the year I turned 20 — voters passed Proposition 117 by ballot measure, designating the mountain lion a “specially protected mammal.” Lions would be shielded from lethal hunting, and for the first time in California history, turning a hound onto a cat’s trail became a criminal offense. Grizzlies and wolves had long been eradicated, leaving only hound-assisted humans as the mountain lion’s singular, top-of-the-food-chain competitor. With this final external pressure essentially eliminated (exceptions were made for scientific study and livestock kills), those of us in the rural foothills began to notice changes.
Depredations climbed. Our longtime neighbor, a man whose ranch had been in his family for generations, lost a couple of sheep in his pasture — a first. More strikingly, people all over the county were actually seeing mountain lions, not only in their high beams at night but in broad daylight, with increasing regularity: crossing the road, loafing at the edge of a fenced field, skirting a campground. My brother experienced the shock of having one run into the side of his pickup one afternoon, deflect away, and bound off into the brush.
The shift in lion behavior wasn’t unique to El Dorado County. In 1992, a 9-year-old boy on a bike ride near Santa Barbara was mauled by a young lion, resulting in more than 600 stitches. In ’93, Cuyamaca Rancho State Park near San Diego closed for several weeks after multiple visitors had too-close-for-comfort encounters. The weekend after reopening, a lion walked into a campground and bit a 10-year-old girl before being driven off by the family dog, which was also mauled. Park rangers shot and killed the lion.
Then, in April 1994, Barbara Schoener disappeared while jogging in El Dorado County, 10 miles from where Taylen and Wyatt were attacked. Her partially consumed body was discovered the next day — neck bitten and skull crushed — in a mound of debris. Schoener became the first lion fatality in California since 1909. Eight months later, another woman was killed in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, where the 10-year-old camper was attacked. In the interim, three other lions were also euthanized in Cuyamaca, after showing aggressive behavior toward humans.
With livestock attacks also steadily increasing, the Department of Fish and Game began to issue more depredation permits. Between 1995 and 2019, well over 100 lions on average were killed annually. Then, in 2020, a statewide directive changed the equation again. The new policy generally allowed multiple attacks by a lion on any given parcel of land before a lethal permit would be issued.
Whether by coincidence or as a direct result, six attacks on humans occurred between 2020 and 2022, all nonfatal and all but one targeting small children. Certain regions of the state, meanwhile, became hot zones of lion activity — out of 31 lethal depredation permits approved statewide in 2023, twelve were in my home county. Three hours west in San Mateo County, a 5-year-old survived an attack on a hiking trail. Soon, the incident with Taylen and Wyatt would mark the first death in two decades.
I graduated in the same high-school class as a kid named John Chandler. We didn’t know each other well then and had no way of predicting how fate would one day connect us. Like me, Chandler grew up hunting and fishing in the heart of California Gold Rush Country. He turned that passion for the outdoors into a career as the El Dorado County Wildlife Specialist, or county trapper. Any time an agricultural producer or horse owner or home gardener has a persistent issue with dangerous or destructive animals — skunks denning under a shed, raccoons raiding a chicken coop, bears gorging in a vineyard — Chandler can assist, either with advice or, if necessary, direct intervention. Over the past few years, more and more cases have involved mountain lions.
“I was skiing when the first call came through,” Chandler told me, about the day my nephews were attacked. It wasn’t a typical weekend contact from a dispatcher or general citizen — this was a call from Jeff Leikauf, the El Dorado County Sheriff, stating that a lion attack had just been reported, that he didn’t have all the details but needed Chandler to get down the hill from Tahoe.
Taylen, left, and Wyatt Brooks in 2016. Credit...Brooks Family
A little later, he received a call from the state department of fish and wildlife: confirmed human fatality. He drove down the mountain at breakneck speed, crated his trio of hounds and sped on, arriving roughly two hours after he was summoned. Wyatt was already at the hospital. The coroner’s van was just leaving with Taylen.
By now a storm front had blown in, the late afternoon sky dumping rain. The deputies and a pair of state game wardens led him to the recovery site where Taylen’s crushed ball cap remained. Chandler turned his hounds loose, down into thicker timber. Within minutes, the dogs were barking, indicating that they had run a lion up a tree, less than a hundred yards from where Taylen’s body was recovered. After consultation with the wardens, Chandler killed the animal with a single shot.
Ten days later, Chandler was called to a livestock kill just outside the city limits of Placerville, the quaint town where we went to high school. He tracked the lion to a paved walking path, practically within rock-chucking distance of an elementary school, a senior living center and the Walmart parking lot.
After his dogs ran it up a tree, several hours of deliberation between Fish and Wildlife and local law enforcement ensued about how to proceed. Eventually, the cat jumped down and went after the dogs, and Chandler had no choice but to shoot.
Ten days after that he was called out again, after another lion came onto the same property and killed the landowner’s dog. Chandler’s hounds treed this cat about a hundred yards from where he treed the first. Both were big, healthy, mature males at the upper end of the weight spectrum, nearly double the size of the cat that attacked Taylen and Wyatt.
Lions attacking a pair of adult men, head-on. Lions jumping into a fenced suburban yard to snatch the family dog in broad daylight. Lions coming out of a tree to engage the hounds that chased it there. Lions hazed away by gunfire, then turning around and charging back for more.
“This is the weirdest year,” Chandler said. “Over 25 years, I’ve had calls for maybe a couple of horses that got attacked. This year, we’re already up to five.”
As Wyatt was being prepped for reconstructive surgery, his only concern was knowing what had become of Taylen. His father told him the news. Wyatt put his swollen head back against the pillow, looked up at that hospital ceiling, and said one word. “Seriously?”
A plastic surgeon worked through the night. The long pair of scimitar-like scars along his left eye will never go away, but the ragged flaps that had been his right nostril and the sliced-open cleft of his upper lip are now barely detectable. I’m not sure what that surgeon did, or how it’s even possible at all, but he made Wyatt look like himself.
“Can I hug you?” I asked, the first time I saw him a week later, not sure of his pain level. He put his arms around me, and the words that came out of my mouth are the absolute truth — I told him he was beautiful.
I was with his father and stepmother, Aaron and Stacy, the first time they entered Taylen’s bedroom, two weeks after the attack, to gather some of his things to send off with him when his body was cremated. Turkey feathers, fishing lures, guitar picks. Tokens he saved from his one young romance. We’re all haunted now by two things — the loss of possibility for what should have been Taylen’s life and whatever it was he had to endure in those violent seconds at the end of his life.
As for Wyatt, he summoned the resolve to head back into the field just a few days after his release from the hospital, on the general opener of turkey season. Not deep into the woods and not to hunt himself, just onto a friend’s property to tag along and try to call in a bird for his buddy. He has always been all-in for the outdoors, with relentless patience in a deer stand or turkey blind, and always the last one off the trout stream. But to go back out like this, so soon after an experience that could have justifiably made him turn away from the wild forever? I don’t know how to explain it, except to say that it’s what he has always done and, despite everything that happened, will always do.
What we love about this region can never be separated from the ways that it will remain largely untamed, with its plunging river canyons and sheer rock pitches, dense thickets of chaparral and manzanita. It’s perfect habitat for creatures that will also never be tamed, and that’s part of the beauty, too, and part of the reason people like my family choose to make a home and a life in such a place.
So the question becomes, how do we coexist going forward? There will most likely never be a perfect, harmonious balance between contemporary humans with modern lives and the wild, apex predators that have occupied the landscape for time immemorial. But as it happens, the practice that was outlawed decades ago in California — nonlethal tree-and-free hound pursuit — has lately become better understood as a means of reinforcing the mountain lion’s historic tendency to avoid humans altogether.
By now a storm front had blown in, the late afternoon sky dumping rain. The deputies and a pair of state game wardens led him to the recovery site where Taylen’s crushed ball cap remained. Chandler turned his hounds loose, down into thicker timber. Within minutes, the dogs were barking, indicating that they had run a lion up a tree, less than a hundred yards from where Taylen’s body was recovered. After consultation with the wardens, Chandler killed the animal with a single shot.
Ten days later, Chandler was called to a livestock kill just outside the city limits of Placerville, the quaint town where we went to high school. He tracked the lion to a paved walking path, practically within rock-chucking distance of an elementary school, a senior living center and the Walmart parking lot.
After his dogs ran it up a tree, several hours of deliberation between Fish and Wildlife and local law enforcement ensued about how to proceed. Eventually, the cat jumped down and went after the dogs, and Chandler had no choice but to shoot.
Ten days after that he was called out again, after another lion came onto the same property and killed the landowner’s dog. Chandler’s hounds treed this cat about a hundred yards from where he treed the first. Both were big, healthy, mature males at the upper end of the weight spectrum, nearly double the size of the cat that attacked Taylen and Wyatt.
Lions attacking a pair of adult men, head-on. Lions jumping into a fenced suburban yard to snatch the family dog in broad daylight. Lions coming out of a tree to engage the hounds that chased it there. Lions hazed away by gunfire, then turning around and charging back for more.
“This is the weirdest year,” Chandler said. “Over 25 years, I’ve had calls for maybe a couple of horses that got attacked. This year, we’re already up to five.”
As Wyatt was being prepped for reconstructive surgery, his only concern was knowing what had become of Taylen. His father told him the news. Wyatt put his swollen head back against the pillow, looked up at that hospital ceiling, and said one word. “Seriously?”
A plastic surgeon worked through the night. The long pair of scimitar-like scars along his left eye will never go away, but the ragged flaps that had been his right nostril and the sliced-open cleft of his upper lip are now barely detectable. I’m not sure what that surgeon did, or how it’s even possible at all, but he made Wyatt look like himself.
“Can I hug you?” I asked, the first time I saw him a week later, not sure of his pain level. He put his arms around me, and the words that came out of my mouth are the absolute truth — I told him he was beautiful.
I was with his father and stepmother, Aaron and Stacy, the first time they entered Taylen’s bedroom, two weeks after the attack, to gather some of his things to send off with him when his body was cremated. Turkey feathers, fishing lures, guitar picks. Tokens he saved from his one young romance. We’re all haunted now by two things — the loss of possibility for what should have been Taylen’s life and whatever it was he had to endure in those violent seconds at the end of his life.
As for Wyatt, he summoned the resolve to head back into the field just a few days after his release from the hospital, on the general opener of turkey season. Not deep into the woods and not to hunt himself, just onto a friend’s property to tag along and try to call in a bird for his buddy. He has always been all-in for the outdoors, with relentless patience in a deer stand or turkey blind, and always the last one off the trout stream. But to go back out like this, so soon after an experience that could have justifiably made him turn away from the wild forever? I don’t know how to explain it, except to say that it’s what he has always done and, despite everything that happened, will always do.
What we love about this region can never be separated from the ways that it will remain largely untamed, with its plunging river canyons and sheer rock pitches, dense thickets of chaparral and manzanita. It’s perfect habitat for creatures that will also never be tamed, and that’s part of the beauty, too, and part of the reason people like my family choose to make a home and a life in such a place.
So the question becomes, how do we coexist going forward? There will most likely never be a perfect, harmonious balance between contemporary humans with modern lives and the wild, apex predators that have occupied the landscape for time immemorial. But as it happens, the practice that was outlawed decades ago in California — nonlethal tree-and-free hound pursuit — has lately become better understood as a means of reinforcing the mountain lion’s historic tendency to avoid humans altogether.
El Dorado County, Calif. Encounters with mountain lions have increased in the area as wildlife-management policies have evolved. Credit...Nicholas Albrecht for The New York Times
A growing body of work conducted by wildlife biologists in several states seems increasingly to bear this out. Bart George, a biologist employed by the Kalispel Tribe of Indians in northeastern Washington, recently concluded a four-year study that pinpointed collared lions by satellite coordinates, often in gulp-inducing proximity to walking trails and residential housing. He would approach, sometimes with hounds, sometimes without. His observation: The lions were scared off by the dogs but not by humans alone.
A second study, published in August 2024 in the science journal Ecology and Evolution, echoes that finding. Researchers contrasted lion behavior in California and Nevada, the latter of which allows both nonlethal hound pursuit and a legal, limited harvest season. The results indicate that the Nevada lions are considerably more inclined to avoid areas where humans live.
Still more recently, in the wake of human encounters culminating in the attack on my nephews, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has emphasized the necessity of “adaptive” management — the notion that circumstances in different regions require different strategies. Starting this month, the department will partner with researchers from Utah State University to test the efficacy of various hazing strategies, primary among them the use of hounds. The project will focus on the current hot zone of El Dorado County, plus the adjacent Sierra foothills counties. For the first time since 1990 and the passage of Prop. 117, tree-and-free is not only part of the discussion in California but will actually be studied as a management tool.
As my family can now tell you, tragedy happens. And as we’re all finding, life still has to continue, even on different terms. My brother is no longer comfortable camping in a tent, or even rolling the trash can down his driveway without a 12-gauge in hand. Wyatt no longer takes his afternoon run down the same rural roads he used to. People I’ve known for years have begun to carry pepper spray to walk to the mailbox.
But nobody is packing up and heading for the city. They still have lives they enjoy, in rural places they love, near the wild regions that call to them.
A second study, published in August 2024 in the science journal Ecology and Evolution, echoes that finding. Researchers contrasted lion behavior in California and Nevada, the latter of which allows both nonlethal hound pursuit and a legal, limited harvest season. The results indicate that the Nevada lions are considerably more inclined to avoid areas where humans live.
Still more recently, in the wake of human encounters culminating in the attack on my nephews, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has emphasized the necessity of “adaptive” management — the notion that circumstances in different regions require different strategies. Starting this month, the department will partner with researchers from Utah State University to test the efficacy of various hazing strategies, primary among them the use of hounds. The project will focus on the current hot zone of El Dorado County, plus the adjacent Sierra foothills counties. For the first time since 1990 and the passage of Prop. 117, tree-and-free is not only part of the discussion in California but will actually be studied as a management tool.
As my family can now tell you, tragedy happens. And as we’re all finding, life still has to continue, even on different terms. My brother is no longer comfortable camping in a tent, or even rolling the trash can down his driveway without a 12-gauge in hand. Wyatt no longer takes his afternoon run down the same rural roads he used to. People I’ve known for years have begun to carry pepper spray to walk to the mailbox.
But nobody is packing up and heading for the city. They still have lives they enjoy, in rural places they love, near the wild regions that call to them.
Fee Exemption Car Stickers
Yosemite residents: Do you enjoy the friendliness and courtesy of the entrance station staff? Please bring a smile to their faces by making sure your vehicle has a current fee exemption sticker. Update your sticker by February 24!
YNP-23 (blue), or YNP-24 (gold/red) stickers are valid now until the end of 2024.
If you need a sticker, email [email protected] with the following info
Name
Mailing address
Vehicle registration(s), or license plate # and state
Phone number
Yosemite residents: Do you enjoy the friendliness and courtesy of the entrance station staff? Please bring a smile to their faces by making sure your vehicle has a current fee exemption sticker. Update your sticker by February 24!
YNP-23 (blue), or YNP-24 (gold/red) stickers are valid now until the end of 2024.
If you need a sticker, email [email protected] with the following info
Name
Mailing address
Vehicle registration(s), or license plate # and state
Phone number
Support Stacy Boydstun's Healing Journey
Hello Wawona friends, students, family, and the many others who love and care for our beloved Wawona teacher Stacy Boydstun. You, like me, may have been fortunate to have this remarkable woman be your friend and your children’s teacher. I have loved hearing her stories of her joy teaching her students, her brave solo travel, and her love of good food, hiking, and the Sierras.
As many of you know, Stacy had a sudden serious illness this summer which resulted in a long hospital stay, major surgery and a cancer diagnosis. She has a long struggle ahead to heal. Her insurance coverage is very limited. She needs to heal now and not worry about the many thousands of dollars needed to pay for her extended hospital stay, complex surgery, and her cancer treatment.
Stacy’s children and myself are starting this GoFundMe because Stacy could never pay off the massive bills for her care.
Please consider donating any amount to help.
Hello Wawona friends, students, family, and the many others who love and care for our beloved Wawona teacher Stacy Boydstun. You, like me, may have been fortunate to have this remarkable woman be your friend and your children’s teacher. I have loved hearing her stories of her joy teaching her students, her brave solo travel, and her love of good food, hiking, and the Sierras.
As many of you know, Stacy had a sudden serious illness this summer which resulted in a long hospital stay, major surgery and a cancer diagnosis. She has a long struggle ahead to heal. Her insurance coverage is very limited. She needs to heal now and not worry about the many thousands of dollars needed to pay for her extended hospital stay, complex surgery, and her cancer treatment.
Stacy’s children and myself are starting this GoFundMe because Stacy could never pay off the massive bills for her care.
Please consider donating any amount to help.
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YOSEMITE-WAWONA ELEMENTARY CHARTER SCHOOL
Board of Directors Regular Meeting
Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024
5:30 P.M.
Wawona Elementary School
7925 Chilnualna Falls Road
Wawona, CA
MONTHLY ITEMS AND FINANCIAL REPORTS
3.1- Approval of Agenda
3.2– Approval of Minutes of the regular meeting of November 12.
3.3 - Approve Warrants/Payroll
3.4 – Accept Donations to YWECS
ACTION ITEMS
INFORMATION ITEMS
Board of Directors Regular Meeting
Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024
5:30 P.M.
Wawona Elementary School
7925 Chilnualna Falls Road
Wawona, CA
- CALL TO ORDER
- ROLL CALL
MONTHLY ITEMS AND FINANCIAL REPORTS
- CONSENT AGENDA
3.1- Approval of Agenda
3.2– Approval of Minutes of the regular meeting of November 12.
3.3 - Approve Warrants/Payroll
3.4 – Accept Donations to YWECS
- HEARING OF PERSONS WISHING TO ADDRESS THE BOARD
ACTION ITEMS
- APPROVAL FIRST INTERIM BUDGET REPORT
- ADOPTION OF POLICIES TO BE INCLUDED IN THE SCHOOL SAFETY PLAN
INFORMATION ITEMS
- STAFF REPORTS
- BUILDINGS AND GROUNDS PROJECTS UPDATE
- FUNDRAISING ACTIVITIES
- BOARD MEMBER COMMENTS
- FUTURE AGENDA ITEMS
- NEXT BOARD MEETING
- ADJOURNMENT
