I feel sorry for the victim and the lion in this case ... It is unfortunate that the woman was attacked. It was very brave and heroic of her companions to fight off the attack and rescue her. What will compound the tragedy is if the reactionary political forces use this, and other recent attacks like it, to justify "thinning" the mountain lion population.
Most people mistakenly think that because there has been an increase in mountain lion attacks recently that it necessarily corresponds to an increase in their population. The opposite almost always true. Cougars, which require LARGE home ranges to hunt and breed, are being squeezed into increasingly small parcels of land. Smaller parcels mean less opportunities to hunt, fewer and fewer prey animals to eat, fewer and fewer breeding pairs. The article I read said the lion was "emaciated". Not exactly a condition that would indicate a thriving, burgeoning lion population. Add to the fact that more and more people are using these same remaining parcels of open land for recreation and presto! ... You have the recipe for what we are seeing now: a spike in the number of lion attacks.