On Saturday evening, a massive police and ranger presence swarmed to the Panhandle of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park after a park ranger confirmed that a mountain lion was up a tree. Officials blocked the area, at Baker and Fell streets, with police tape, shone lights up the tree and flew a drone all around the tree.

But by dawn Sunday, the officials had all left – and so too, they said, had the mountain lion. But no one could say where exactly it went. Nor did officials say that the public should remain on alert.

Here are key questions about the lion, and answers as far as we know them.

Was it definitely a mountain lion in the tree?

On Saturday morning, Animal Care and Control officers got an initial report from a person walking a dog, said Deb Campbell, a spokesperson for the group. The person who submitted the report described glimpsing the lion climbing into a tree with dense foliage. To confirm the initial report, rangers from the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department and Animal Care and Control monitored the tree the rest of the day Saturday – and around 8:30 p.m. they spied the lion, according to Campbell. About a half-hour later, San Francisco sent out an alert warning people to avoid the area and to stay home if they live nearby.

In short, it was considered a confirmed sighting by the park ranger. But officials with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, who arrived late Saturday night, never saw the lion.

Did anyone see the lion leave the tree? And is it confirmed to have left the tree? 

Department of Fish and Wildlife officials said they are not aware of anyone seeing the lion come down from the tree.

However, Animal Care and Control says the lion was able to “safely exit the situation overnight.” The group said it was a “best-case scenario” that the lion was “in a natural setting with a safe corridor back to the wild.” (It is unclear what that corridor is, but Golden Gate Park is the direct route to the coast through a park.) The lion, ACC said, “was not cornered, as prior lion visitors have been, and was able to leave the scene peacefully.”

It was also not clear when the lion left the tree. After the initial confirmation of the sighting, authorities’ presence ramped up significantly late Saturday night, with police vehicles continuing to arrive around 11 p.m. and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which appear to have been prepared to take the lead on the issue, not arriving until around then. CDFW officials said they never saw the lion. 

“There was no reason to dart it, and that would be unsafe in the area it was in,” ACC said by text, citing expertise from CDFW. “Contrast a tree in a park with being stuck and trapped between buildings like the one in January. The best pathway was to allow it the space and calm environment to move away naturally. They are elusive animals that are good at hiding.”

Krysten Kellum, a spokesperson for the Department of Fish and Wildlife, said police determined the mountain lion wasn’t still in the tree after using thermal imaging drones.

Where is the lion now?

No one knows. Kellum said the mountain lion is expected to follow a wildlife corridor back to

its natural habitat on its own.

It’s unclear whether it’s still in San Francisco. ACC has not received any reports of the lion appearing elsewhere, Campbell said.

Should the public remain on alert?

ACC said in a news release Sunday that “There is no longer a threat from a mountain lion.”

Despite the huge police and warden presence Saturday night, no further warnings were issued Sunday morning. People carried on as usual in Golden Gate Park and the Panhandle – jogging, walking, biking, pushing strollers, walking dogs and enjoying the beautiful day.

The Chronicle has asked numerous agencies about how the public can be confident that there is no longer a lion roaming the heart of San Francisco; no one has given a clear answer.

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This article originally published at S.F. mountain lion mystery: Where is it now? And how did it get out of the tree?.