The problem may no longer exist in a few years, but children used to playing in a deemed-safe countryside might be at risk in the meantime.
Plus if it did have a taste for humans, we’d already have reports of people being attacked by now. So if there is a big cat, and that’s a big “if”, then it’s more likely the cat is at risk from farmers shooting a predictor to the farm’s livestock, than kids are at risk from the cat
> I think we are long past the era when kids would run off for miles into the countryside, unaccompanied by an adult.
I used to venture far when I was 13. Times are different now