'Stay out of the woods': Snipers, trackers and night vision drones deployed as lion remains on the loose near Berlin

21 July 2023, 08:21 | Updated: 21 July 2023, 08:53

Search efforts will ramp up today for a lioness that is believed to be on the loose near Berlin.

Professional animal trackers are to be deployed as residents around Berlin were sent emergency alerts to their phones warning of a “big cat on the loose.”

This morning, 120 extra search personnel were being deployed.

Overnight citizens played a prank by playing a lion’s roar loudly throughout the night.

However there was mystery linked to the search with no zoos, animal parks or circuses in the area reporting they had a lion missing.

There are also no known privately-owned lions in the vicinity, according to the mayor of Kleinmachnow, a town of 20,000 inhabitants in Brandenburg where the sighting took place.

Search efforts continued overnight, with police patrolling the streets in emergency vehicles.

Police had been searching forest in the area of Nikolassee, south west of Berlin.

Residents are being told to avoid southern forest areas of Berlin beyond the city limits.


Police were alerted to the animal in Kleinmachnow, just outside Berlin's city limits, at about midnight on Tuesday by people reporting seeing a big cat chasing a wild boar.

Based on a video provided by the callers and a sighting of their own, police concluded the animal is a lioness.

Helicopters and 30 police cars took part in the search, which continued on Thursday afternoon.

A vet and two hunters were also involved and a search with two drones and infrared cameras was underway in an area where the animal was spotted.

People in Kleinmachnow, a town of about 20,000 in a flat, wooded area on the boundary between Berlin and the surrounding state of Brandenburg, were advised to stay indoors if possible - and in any case to refrain from walks and jogs in the woods and to take dogs - at most - for short walks on a lead.

Local authorities left children's nurseries open, though they were asked not to let children outside, and scaled back the town's weekly market.

The warning was extended to neighbouring southern areas of Berlin and an alert was sent on an official warning app.

On Thursday afternoon, police in the capital tweeted to say there had been a "possible sighting" of the animal just inside the city limits.

"The primary aim, if at all possible, is to capture the animal, if necessary with an anaesthetic," Kleinmachnow mayor Michael Grubert said.

"Other measures will only be taken on a case-by-case basis by police officers on the ground if their own lives or those of others are endangered."

Police said they sought information on where the animal came from during the night, but none of the zoos, animals shelters, circuses or other facilities they checked was missing a lioness.

Mr Grubert said there was no information on one being privately owned in the area and he did not know whether owning such an animal privately is even allowed.

He said authorities consider it unlikely the animal has gone very far from where it was first sighted.