The necessary kill of a mountain lion in Aromas once again
brings to light the reality that the state is spending $10 million
a year on a preservation program without actually keeping tabs on
the species’ population.
The necessary kill of a mountain lion in Aromas once again brings to light the reality that the state is spending $10 million a year on a preservation program without actually keeping tabs on the species’ population.
A county-designated trapper with the U.S. Department of Agriculture a week ago trapped a cougar and put it down shortly after a rancher reported two steers killed, with the evidence pointing to involvement from one or two mountain lions. Authorities killed the mountain lion, a state standard considering the concern of a particular cougar becoming comfortable in a residential area.
Beyond such individual cases and basic guidelines for ranchers and local government officials to follow, though, the state has shown little effort to actually manage the population. As we have reported in the past, the state more than two decades ago stopped conducting official counts of the mountain lion population. Fish and Game previously had kept a close watch on a species whose numbers steadily increased until the practice ended. The population that year, 1988, had reached an estimate of 4,000 to 6,000 cougars – a healthy, conservative number that the state uses today in its subjective analysis based on reported “incidents” and “sightings.”
But without a structured program – or at least guidelines calling for periodically scheduled, real population surveys – the $10 million annual allocation that goes toward species preservation serves little purpose and lacks scientific justification. It also serves as contradictory from a broader environmental perspective considering that there is strong evidence of deer populations vastly decreasing in the past four decades. Deer, of course, are primary prey for mountain lions. It is especially important to switch gears from conservation mode to more of a management outlook because lions are such dangerous animals with capacity to kill humans – or to damage the livelihood of hard-working ranchers and farmers.
County officials already have taken steps to incite action from the Fish and Game by officially requesting a statewide count of the species, and they should continue working proactively while taking a leadership role on a pressing matter.
The state’s decision makers have to ask themselves a basic question: Should we continue protecting a species that no longer needs protection, or should we make it a priority to examine the potential dangers that lions might have on human populations? Without an updated count, it is impossible to protect either cougars or people.
