This Northern California mountain lion is a serial killer - of horses

It has been 10 days since he killed here, but the smell of death still fills the air. Pieces of the wild horse are left scattered among the dirt and grass. A red rib, not yet sun-bleached, lies in the dirt. A vertebra of spine over by a sage bush. Tufts of the horse's dark mane sit among the black and brown lava rocks. Coyotes, vultures and bobcats have already been here, picking through the killer's leftovers. Less than 100 metres away, a herd of wild horses grazes, unfazed by the proximity to the dismembered 10-month-old foal. Prowling a home range of about 620 square kilometres is an adult male mountain lion known as M166. In the past year, while his feline counterparts have feasted mainly on deer, this cougar has garnered a reputation as a horse killer par excellence. Local ranchers who believe this part of rural Modoc County has too many wild horses for the local ecology must, grudgingly, tip their hats to the mountain lion. They wish more of the area's cougars had a gift for mowing down horses."A lot of people who have lived here their entire lives, they've never seen populations like this - both of horses and of mountain lions - and both make them uncomfortable." For the past few weeks, a helicopter has whirred above Modoc National Forest in an effort to gather 1000 of the estimated 4000 wild horses that live in the Devil's Garden. Experts found that the 100,000 hectares of the forest where the horses live can sustain no more than 402 horses without significant damage to the ecosystem and to the horses themselves. The effort has spawned complaints and lawsuits...MORE