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Cougar Comment
Cougar Comment is the editorial voice of the Mountain Lion Foundation.

Title: Who's At Fault -- Renegade Hunters or the Hunting Farm?
Date: 1/24/2012
Last May, the Mountain Lion Foundation helped bring to light accusations from a disgruntled ex-hunting guide that mountain lions were being killed illegally on the historic 270,000-acre Tejon Ranch, located about 60 miles north of Los Angeles. The whistle-blower claimed that the killings were motivated by anger among ranch managers toward Proposition 117--the 1990 ballot initiative which banned the trophy hunting of mountain lions in California--because the mountain lions dined on prized game animals whose killing-rights the ranch sold to trophy hunters for up to $20,000 each. The claimant stated that over a five-year period he pe ...
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Title: Who We Are Fighting
Date: 12/1/2011
Recently a Colorado resident wrote an opinion piece for his local newspaper lamenting the loss of Colorado's "great western outdoor culture," and warned the public about the infiltration of that state's wildlife agency by "agenda-driven environmentalists, masquerading as biologists."

Inspiration for this familiar rant was news of the arrest of three Boulder, Colorado men for felony animal abuse after they killed a trash can raiding raccoon. Claiming that this action was his "breaking point," and that raccoons are not even on the endangered species list, the opinionist went on to complain that Colorado was "feeding our precious resources [deer] ...
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Title: How Many Lion Hunters are There? -- Really
Date: 11/21/2011
Since the European colonization of this continent, America's lion population has been persecuted and hunted to the point where, with the exception of the small clump hanging on to existence by their claws in the Florida Everglades, only fourteen western states are considered to still have viable populations.* With possibly any other animal, such a massive reduction in a species' historic population size and range would have spurred nationwide protection measures. Instead lions are treated as pariahs of the animal kingdom considered worthy only for the amount of recreational fun they can provide to lion-hunters.

In the 1990s, when t ...
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Title: Californians Value Their Lions
Date: 10/24/2011
Last month, the only known male mountain lion left in Southern California's Santa Monica Mountains was killed and mutilated by a poacher. Residents were outraged that, according to Calabasas City Councilmember Mary Sue Maurer, "someone would intentionally kill one of our rare mountain lions. We are determined to do everything we can to bring the perpetrator to justice."

California is home to the nation's largest mountain lion population, and many communities take great pride in their local wildlife and do everything they can to prevent poaching. The town of Calabasas is no exception and has joined with CalTIP (Californians Turn In Poachers a ...
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Title: Why won't the California Department of Fish and Game Protect Our Lions?
Date: 10/20/2011
Due to what appears to be bad decisions made on the part of California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) officials, an innocent mountain lion and two of her three young kittens have been killed, with the remaining kitten left to starve or eventually be killed by humans.

The saga of this little family tragedy started near the rural community of Susanville, California in mid-August after the mother lion killed a deer (which is a lion's natural prey-species) and began feeding upon it along with her three kittens. While this was a natural act, and the lions had not harmed or threatened any humans or their pets and livestock, CDFG authorities decid ...
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Title: South Dakota's Unaccountable Game Commission
Date: 10/14/2011
For the third year in a row, the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks (SDGF&P) Commission has decided that they know more than their own agency's experts. They have concluded that if "more" is acceptable for the Department, then "twice" more must be better and should be enacted by the Commission. Such, apparently, was the reasoning behind the SDGF&P Commission's recent decision to once again double the Department's proposed annual quota increase of 10 lions for the upcoming hunting season. As a result South Dakota's mountain lion hunting quota for the 2012 season has now been raised to 70 lions, 50 of which are allowed to be females (out of a total population of possibly 200 lions--including kittens). This quota is the highest since South Dakota resumed mountain lion hunting in 2005, and t ...
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Title: WDFW Can't Change Its Spots
Date: 9/15/2011
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) is asking the public's opinion on this year's cougar hunting regulations and quotas. Unfortunately the Department is carrying out this task in such a way that only hunters are being officially notified of the request. Once again a state game agency, supposedly mandated to protect the state's natural resources for all of its citizenry is twisting the rules to ensure a desired outcome which will only benefit an extremely small but influential special interest group.

The Department's own scientists have recommended a reduction in the number of cougars killed acros ...
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Title: Exposing the Selectivity Myth of Hound-Hunting Lions
Date: 9/2/2011
Hound-hunting involves using a pack of far-ranging, radio-collared dogs to chase a luckless lion for miles until finally, exhausted and scared, it instinctively seeks safety up a tree. Later (sometimes days), a "sportsman" will arrive at the scene and shoot the terrified animal until it falls out of the tree. The hunting of lions with hounds is considered by many to be a cruel and inhumane practice; and as a result of citizen-placed state ballot measures, it is banned in California,* Oregon and Washington.

Despite the public's revulsion of the practice, hound-hunting is constantly being promoted as the best [for the species] method of hunti ...
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Title: What is the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks Hiding?
Date: 8/18/2011
While most state game agencies have a tendency to hold information close to their chests, SDGF&P seems to have reached new heights in the art of bureaucratic "disclosure/nondisclosure." For example, in the Department's recent proposal to raise the annual lion hunting quota by 20 percent it cited "current research results and population modeling" as their justification for this egregious action. The problem is that SDGF&P hasn't released any research information or lion population modeling to the public to back up their claims.

Just over a year ago, when the same people published their 2010 - 2015 lion management plan, the Mountain Lion Foundation challenged SDGF&P on the validity of its conclusions and pointed out that the document was full of incorrect data, flawed mathematical c ...
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Title: Hammering the Final Nail in Washington's I-655 Coffin
Date: 7/13/2011
In 1996, Washington voters overwhelmingly passed Initiative-655 to ban the inhumane practice of hunting cougars with hounds. So as to not place the citizenry at undo risk, I-655 also included a "public safety" clause. This provision allowed the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFG) to utilize hounds to track and kill those individual cougars which posed a threat to the public's safety or preyed on domestic animals.

Over the years, this crack in Washington's cougar protection wall has been exploited over and over again by parties who can't stand to have others tell them what they can or can not do. The most recent assault on I-655's hounding ban comes from WDFW itself with their current proposed rule changes to Washington Administrative Code (WAC) 232-12-243.

N ...
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Title: HB 3636 - Oregon's Legislative Sleight of Hand Cheats Residents Once Again
Date: 7/5/2011
Last week, the Oregon legislature passed HB 3636 which is now awaiting the Governor's signature. At first glance the bill didn't look too onerous. It required that the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife provide an option on all hunting related applications for voluntary contributions in support of county predatory animal control programs. It even allowed the Department to recover some of the costs attributed to enacting this change. However, this is as far in straightforwardness that HB 3636 goes.

First, HB 3636's authors used a savvy marketing technique and titled the new state fund used to collect and distribute these contributions the Wildlife Conservation Fund. Pretty name; it lulls the public into thinking the fund will be used to conserve wildlife. This couldn't be furth ...
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Title: Stop the Killing - NOW!
Date: 5/13/2011
Never before in the history of our country have mountain lions been more heavily persecuted. Even at its worst, far fewer lions were killed and turned in for a bounty each year than are now being killed in the name of "recreational fun," or because some won't feel safe until every last lion has been killed.

For many years, MLF and other main-stream conservation leaders have called for sound wildlife management decisions based on scientific facts. And most state game agencies seemed to comply to this demand with "management plans" and hunting quotas which, they claimed,were designed to maintain sustainable lion populations. It didn't matter that MLF and some of the best lion researchers in the country questioned many of their proposals and the so-called science they were based on. ...
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Title: South Dakota's Silent Protest
Date: 1/19/2011
The South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Commission recently received the startling news that 19 of the 220 applicants for their "special" lottery of Custer State Park mountain lion hunting tags may not have been lion-hunters after all. In fact, an analysis of the applicants conducted by the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Department (SDGF&PD) led some officials there to surmise that anti-lion hunting activists "might have been trying to keep the special licenses from going to lion hunters." This statement caused one of the Commissioners to question whether "a silent protest" was under way.

A SILENT PROTEST? Where have these guys been? Mountain lion activists (including MLF) from across the country have been aggressively and vocally objecting to South Dakota's recently adopted moun ...
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Title: High Handed Tactics
Date: 12/28/2010
Four days from now, the South Dakota 2011 Mountain Lion Hunting Season will open. Cloaked in the false mantle of "sustainability" this year's annual slaughter could be the highest ever and will, in our judgment, put South Dakota's mountain lion population at risk of extirpation--AGAIN!

The South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Department refuses to accept that their latest mountain lion management plan--the one which dictates how mountain lions are treated for the next five-years--is fatally flawed, and could lead to the cascading extinction of the species in that state. Instead they, and the Commission which provides direction and oversight, seem hell-bent on defying calls for restraint in order to provide an extremely small number of South Dakotans the opportunity to behave like sad ...
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Title: Hard to Believe
Date: 12/6/2010
There is an e-mail story circulating the Net about a Montana couple being saved from a mountain lion attack by their mule. The story "1 Bad Ass" and the accompanying graphic photographs of the mule fighting and killing the lion are supposed to convey to the gullible public a sense that: 1) mountain lions are dangerous and attack people; and 2) mountain lions (the obvious bad guys in this fairy tale) can be defeated by righteous, rough and tough hunter types, and of course their faithful equine companions.

It's too bad everything about that story is a lie.

1st The Montana couple and their valiant fighting mule are a figment of imagination.

2nd The mule is not fighting a lion, but instead grabbing and tossing the dead body of a mountain lion sh ...
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Title: Give Them an Inch . . . .
Date: 11/10/2010
A hundred years ago the California State Legislature established the first of sixteen State Game Refuges. Scattered across the state, these Refuges--set-up as game-animal (deer) breeding centers protected by no-hunting, no-firearm laws--now encompass 1,100 square miles of habitat and provide safe havens for a wide range of California's wildlife.

Citing an impediment to law enforcement operations,* and the overall failure to significantly generate more deer for hunters to shoot, the California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) requested permission from the State Legislature to "close" the Refuges and allow additional "recreational opportunities" for deer hunters. In 2008, Assembly Bill 1166 directed CDFG to study the situation and solicit public input.

While CDFG has pre ...
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Title: Nevada's Wildlife Range War is Heating Up
Date: 9/22/2010
There is a small range war waging over the fate of mountain lions in Nevada. The two feuding parties--The Nevada Department of Wildlife(NDOW), and the Commission which oversees them--are fighting over a very unlikely issue--how many mountain lions to kill.

It started when influential, special interest hunting groups petitioned the Nevada Board of Wildlife Commission to protect Nevada's deer herd from mountain lions so their members would have more deer to shoot. The Commission responded by ordering NDOW to implement a series of predator removal programs aimed directly at mountain lions.

They also formed a "Mule Deer Restoration Subcommittee" to provide a public platform for disgruntled deer hunters, open-range ranching interests, lion hunters, and ex-employees of USDA's ...
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Title: South Dakota's Magically Replicating Lions
Date: 8/10/2010
In Walt Disney's animated classic, Fantasia, poor, befuddled Mickey uses his boss's magic wand to conjure a self-replicating charm which creates a veritable army of enchanted brooms. It now appears that the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish & Parks have produced their own version of "Fantasia" when it comes to estimating the number of mountain lions which live within the state.

Just over a month ago, the Department released its proposed 2010 - 2015 Mountain Lion Management Plan, where they declared, with bombast certainty, that 251 mountain lions (138 adults; 113 kittens) were living in the Black Hills region of the state at the end of 2009*. Based on trends developed by MLF from the Department's annual mortality reports, an estimated 78 mountain lion mortalities will be repor ...
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Title: Twisting Science
Date: 7/19/2010
Seven years ago, the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish & Parks (SDGF&P) presented the
world with their version of a mountain lion management plan. In that plan was the proposal for
an "experimental" mountain lion hunting season. They justified this action as "just another step
in the evolution of responsible mountain lion management," and because it "would
communicate to some people that mountain lions are being managed responsibly." Now, five
hunting seasons later, SDGF&P is kowtowing to special interest hunting groups and proposing a
new mountain lion management plan where the recreational hunting of lions is no longer
considered as experimental, but is the cornerstone of their entire management program.

Granted at first look the new plan ...
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Title: Ignorance or Conspiracy?
Date: 6/29/2010
Recently a small town newspaper in Mendocino County (California) published a personal rant by their "sports columnist" against the citizen-placed ballot initiative, Proposition 117, which voters passed twenty years ago this month.

In his article the author, who passes himself off as "someone in the know," misstates just about everything there is to know about mountain lions in general, and about California's experience with mountain lions in particular.

Every point he makes, (and there are several) is calculated not to apprise the public, but to strike fear in the uninformed and generate opposition to the 20-year old ban on hunting mountain lions in California for fun.

According to this so-called "expert," up to 20,000 mountain lions are romping around the state ...
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Title: Wyoming Makes Mountain Lions the Scapegoats Again!
Date: 6/21/2010
Tomorrow (June 22nd) is the final day the Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD) is accepting written comments on their proposed 2010-11 Mountain Lion Hunting Regulations. Unfortunately, the new regulations are a misguided attempt to placate a small, but vocal, special interest group (deer hunters), and have no chance of achieving their attended goal.

It appears that, like in most of the western states, Wyoming's mule deer herd was significantly larger twenty years ago. Human obstruction in historic migratory deer routes, a severe multi-year drought, radical changes to deer habitat vegetation, and excessive periods of over-hunting have all done their part in reducing many of the regional mule deer populations to half of what they were in 1992.

Now, despite the Department ...
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Title: California's Proposition 117 - Twenty Years Later
Date: 6/7/2010
Twenty years ago, California voters passed Proposition 117--the Mountain Lion Initiative. Also known as the "People's Initiative" because it was the first statewide initiative in California to qualify for the ballot strictly through the efforts of unpaid volunteers, Proposition 117:

* Changed the classification of mountain lions in California from game mammals to "Specially Protected Mammals,"

* banned the practice of killing mountain lions in California for fun, and

* directed the California State legislature to allocate a minimum of $30 million annually for thirty years towards the acquisition of critical habitat for all of the state's wildlife.

While some might consider Proposition 117 as a complete reversal of positions--California had been res ...
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Title: Fear Factor
Date: 5/28/2010
Several news reports came out of Wisconsin last week about the presence of a cougar in that state. Unfortunately, this "verified" sighting--only the fourth since the species was extirpated in 1908--came with a slight twist. The cougar in question also reportedly attacked and injured a one-year-old heifer calf. This incident, the first of its kind in Wisconsin in over a hundred years, now raises the question of what to do with the offending animal.

One Wisconsin biologist and lion researcher, who is helping the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources develop a plan for dealing with these magnificent creatures, believes that this particular cougar--if guilty of the crime accused--must be killed. His justifications for this opinion came with the statement that "the most important ...
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Title: Is Nothing Sacred in South Dakota?
Date: 5/17/2010
The South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks Department (SDGF&P) recently held a series of public meetings to assist in developing that state's upcoming mountain lion hunting plan. In addition, "input" cards were freely distributed at each of the meetings to anyone who wanted to comment.

One of the issues under discussion was whether or not to allow the hunting of mountain lions for recreational purposes in Custer State Park. Apparently 355 people responded on this issue with (according to SDGF&P) the "vast majority" supporting the concept.

I understand that South Dakota doesn't actually have a lot of people living there. Only 812,383 according to the US Census Bureau, or to put it in perspective, slightly more people live in the entire state of South Dakota than reside within th ...
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Title: Choices
Date: 5/10/2010
Sometimes the choices one makes can have far reaching ramifications. This has never been truer than with what happened a few weeks ago to a young mountain lion mother and her two "teenage" cubs in South Dakota.

Apparently the mother lion and her two cubs denned up for a short time near a typically large-acreage suburban/rural style housing development. This particular spot would have been especially enticing to them because of the abundant food supply--keep in mind teenagers eat a lot! Then while behaving naturally and killing a deer (their natural prey source), an unprotected goat was spotted just on the other side of a backyard fence, and it too was added to the menu. Unfortunately (for the lions) it was easier for them to get over the fence than it was to bring back their dinne ...
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