Mountain lion shot with tranquilizer gun in SF’s Diamond Heights

California Department of Fish and Wildlife Game Warden Lt. James Ober places a leather harness to restrain a tranquilized mountain lion on a hillside by an apartment complex in the Diamond Heights neighborhood in San Francisco, Calif. on Friday, Nov. 10, 2017. less California Department of Fish and Wildlife Game Warden Lt. James Ober places a leather harness to restrain a tranquilized mountain lion on a hillside by an apartment complex in the Diamond Heights neighborhood ... more Photo: Stephen Lam, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Stephen Lam, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 29 Caption Close Mountain lion shot with tranquilizer gun in SF’s Diamond Heights 1 / 29 Back to Gallery

A mountain lion slinking around the Diamond Heights area of San Francisco was cornered by a game warden and shot with a tranquilizer gun Friday behind a housing complex.

The animal was turned over to the Santa Cruz Puma Project out of UC Santa Cruz, which, by late Friday afternoon, had fitted the cougar with a radio and GPS collar and was preparing to release it in the wild.

City police, animal control officers and California Department of Fish and Wildlife wardens surrounded a cluster of buildings known as Diamond Heights Village, where the cougar was seen in the morning crouching amid the trees, brush and ivy behind the homes.

Wildlife experts said the animal probably wandered into San Francisco and was trying to get back to its home territory when it was spotted Friday morning in the area of Diamond Heights Boulevard and Duncan Street, next to Glen Canyon Park, by members of the Diamond Heights Village Association.

The animal was about a block from Christopher Playground, which is part of a large park complex frequented by children. Because it was so close to kids and in a heavily populated area, wildlife officials decided it would be best to tranquilize and relocate the big cat.

“When I arrived, the mountain lion was hunkered down,” said Lt. James Ober, a Fish and Wildlife game warden, who arrived at the complex, on the 5100 block of Diamond Heights Boulevard, shortly before 1 p.m. “It appeared to be under a lot of stress.”

Ober crept up to the cat with his tranquilizer rifle and shot it with a dart loaded with the sedative telazol. The 82-pound male cougar collapsed on a patch of dirt and rolled down the hillside above a driveway at the four-story wood shingled apartment complex. Ober said the animal was still moving after 10 minutes, so he shot it a second time.

By 2 p.m., the mountain lion had been cinched to a carrier and loaded into the warden’s pickup truck, where the dart could still be seen sticking out of his hind quarters. As many as 20 onlookers gawked at the unconscious puma as it lay in the truck, its front and rear paws secured with straps and a black mask over his eyes.

“It went very smoothly,” Ober said.

The GPS collar fitted on the cat is the same kind used to track at least 40 mountain lions in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The idea is to relocate the cat to the nearest suitable habitat, probably on Golden Gate National Recreation Area land on the Peninsula.

Biologists will first draw blood to test for pathogens and determine its genetics.

Click forward to learn about the history of mountain lions in California. Click forward to learn about the history of mountain lions in California. Image 1 of / 15 Caption Close History of pumas (mountain lions) in California 1 / 15 Back to Gallery

“We don’t pass up an opportunity to learn as much as we can from it, so we draw blood and take samples,” said Justin Dellinger, senior environmental scientist for Fish and Wildlife’s investigations lab. “We will try and assess the health of the animal as well as trying to determine where it originated from via genetics.”

It was not clear whether the sleek feline was the same animal that created an uproar earlier in the week when one was seen lurking around mansions in the Presidio and Sea Cliff.

Fish and Wildlife officials initially thought Friday that the puma was a female, but Chris Wilmers, a wildlife ecologist at UC Santa Cruz and the head of the Puma Project, said it is “a typical young dispersal-age male who takes a wrong turn.”

“We’re pretty sure it’s from the Peninsula because otherwise it would have had to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge or swim across,” he said, “so we’re going to drop it off on the Peninsula, where it is most likely to have come from.”

A puma was recorded on a security camera at 5 a.m. Wednesday loping past the home of Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who lives in Sea Cliff, near China Beach. A cougar was also captured on surveillance video last Saturday outside the billionaire tech executive’s home.

Sea Cliff is about 6 miles by car from Diamond Heights. The route goes through numerous neighborhoods and across several major thoroughfares, especially if one goes by a circuitous route using beaches, parks and wildlands.

Wildlife experts believe the big cat either found its way to San Francisco from wildland areas on the Peninsula or sauntered over the Golden Gate Bridge in the middle of the night, a path coyotes have been known to take.

“It’s very common for a mountain lion to attempt dispersal and to try to find it’s own territory,” Ober said, adding that the animals usually figure out they’ve made a wrong turn and head back.

Still, the presence of a puma in busy Diamond Heights was unexpected, and nobody was sure how it got so far into the city without being seen.

“We’re all kind of baffled,” said Dellinger, a mountain lion expert. “I think we’re all a little stumped about how it even got there.”

Residents in the area were protective of the muscular cat.

“The animals were here before,” Sia Terplant, 11, said as she watched the mountain lion being loaded into the truck. “Maybe the people should leave.”

As the drama unfolded Friday, gun-toting police officers were stationed on each side of the building keeping residents and onlookers away. San Francisco police Lt. Rachel Murphy got a peek at the cougar as she waited for Ober to arrive with his tranquilizer gun.

“She’s beautiful,” Murphy said, before the sex of the cat was determined.

Pete Swearengen arrived home from a meeting Friday only to learn that he couldn’t use the complex’s parking garage because, of all things, a mountain lion was roaming the property. He said he has seen coyotes and hawks in the area, so it isn’t surprising a predator would come looking for prey, but he never expected a puma would come knocking.

“I’m concerned for the health and safety of the animal,” Swearengen said amid an array of police cars, fire trucks and news vans on the block.

Deb Campbell, spokeswoman for San Francisco Animal Care and Control, said there have been reports of mountain lions in the city in the past, but none of the department’s officers had seen one.

“This is different,” she said. “It seems everyone is moving to San Francisco, including the wildlife.”

Steve Rubenstein, Kurtis Alexander and Peter Fimrite are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com, kalexander@sfchronicle.com, pfimrite@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SteveRubeSF, @KurtisAlexander, @pfimrite