![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.nwic.edu\/pavlik\/files\/2010\/02\/Mountain-lion-picture.jpg\" "\\"Mountain")
<\/a><\/p>\nSevered heads of 11 mountain lions among 24 killed by Animal Damage Control on December 1988-May 1989 in the Coronado National Forest, Galiuro Mountains, Arizona.\u00a0 These lions were killed to protect livestock grazing on public, not private land.<\/em><\/p>\n Download the printable version<\/a><\/p>\n The mountain lion, also commonly known as the cougar or puma, is the great cat of the Americas.\u00a0 To scientists, he is puma concolor <\/em>\u2013 the cat of one color. To those who are of a more romantic mindset, he is the \u201cghost cat\u201d or the \u201cspirit of the mountains.\u201d To Native Americans he has always been a sacred being – an animal of mystery and power.\u00a0 Sadly, to contemporary wildlife managers, he is merely a game animal, a trophy, and often, a perceived legal liability and an inconvenience.<\/p>\n On September 24, 2009 I was honored to participate in a series of events held at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado designed to educate the community and campus about mountain lions.<\/p>\n Within the past year or so, several mountain lions had entered the Durango city limits where they were deemed to be a threat to public safety and were killed by the Colorado Division of Wildlife. \u00a0The interest generated in these incidents led Fort Lewis College to choose David Baron\u2019s The Beast in the Garden <\/em>(2003) \u2013 a book that documents a fatal cougar attack – <\/em>as its Freshmen Reader for their \u201cCommon Reading Experience\u201d program.\u00a0 In addition to having their freshmen read The Beast in the Garden, <\/em>Fort Lewis College also organized other educational events including several lectures and classroom presentations, an evening panel discussion, and a truly first-rate museum exhibit entitled \u201cMountain Lion!\u201d at their Center for Southwest Studies.\u00a0 This comprehensive exhibit will run until the fall of 2010 and is a \u201cmust see\u201d for anyone interested in the big cat.<\/p>\n I was invited to make several contributions to the mountain lion program.\u00a0 I started the day by doing a one hour interview on the campus radio station with Dr. Bridget Irish \u2013 organizer of the lion program, and Dr. Rick Wheelock \u2013 a longtime friend and colleague who teaches Native American studies at Fort Lewis College.\u00a0 The focus of this interview was the role of mountain lions in Native American culture.\u00a0 After that, I visited Dr. Irish\u2019s freshman class where I answered questions regarding a chapter I had written for the book Listening to Cougar <\/em>(2007) edited by Marc Bekoff and Cara Blessley Lowe. \u00a0This chapter \u2013 \u201cThe Sacred Cat: The Role of Mountain Lion in Navajo Culture and Lifeway\u201d \u2013 had been one of the assigned readings for the students. Later in the day I also had the opportunity to speak to two of Dr. Wheelock\u2019s Native American studies classes, and to view the museum exhibit.<\/p>\n The featured event of the awareness program was the evening panel \u2013 entitled \u201cLiving with the Beast: Perspectives on Mountain Lions and People\u201d – for which I served as one of four participants along with the moderator, the before mentioned author Dave Baron.\u00a0 I was amazed when I took the stage for this two hour event \u2013 every seat in the house was full and many people were standing alongside the aisles.\u00a0 I was later told that the auditorium seated 600 people. \u00a0Clearly, mountain lions were very much on the minds of the people of Durango and the students of Fort Lewis College.<\/p>\n My fellow panelists were Patricia Dorsey, the area Wildlife Manager for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, Dr. Lee Ann Harbison, a biologist, rancher, and mother, and Ed Zink who is also a Durango-area rancher and hunter. Mr. Zink came onto the panel as a replacement for Dr. Marc Bekoff who cancelled the evening before.\u00a0 I was extremely disappointed that Bekoff, a professor emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado, and perhaps the foremost ethologist (one who studies the emotional and behavioral lives of animals) in the country, could not attend.\u00a0 I have read many of his books, and over the past couple of years and had also corresponded with him. Consequently I had been most anxious to meet him.\u00a0 More importantly, this put me in the situation of being \u201cthe odd man out\u201d on this panel.\u00a0 I think that Marc and I would have approached lion issues from pretty much the same position.\u00a0 While I will not label the other three panelists as necessarily being \u201canti-lion,\u201d their perspectives were all very similar to each other, and far different than my own.\u00a0 In sum, they approached things from a purely anthropocentric viewpoint, whereas my own views were far more \u201clion-centric.\u201d Fortunately throughout the evening Mr. Baron \u2013 perhaps recognizing that I was somewhat outnumbered – allowed me adequate time to express my opinions and respond to most of the statements made by the other panelists.<\/p>\n My own background and experience dealing with mountain lion issues goes beyond the Native American component.\u00a0 While living in Arizona I participated in several mountain lion track count surveys and was able to associate with some of the best cougar biologists in the country, most notably Harley Shaw, who I worked with for many years on a mountain lion and bear track count in the Huachuca Mountains. \u00a0I was also a wildlife activist who volunteered and\/or provided assistance to a number of conservation groups working on large carnivore issues \u2013 the Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club, The Center for Biological Diversity, Sky Island Alliance, and the Animal Defense League of Arizona.\u00a0 Often my efforts with these organizations focused on lion issues. On several occasions I wrote position papers and testified at various hearings against what I believe to be the archaic predator control policies of the Arizona Department of Game and Fish (AGFD) – an agency that largely represents the interests of hunters and the ranching community. \u00a0In 2001, for example, I became involved when AGFD announced their intent to kill up to 36 lions as part of their plan to reintroduce desert bighorn sheep into a mountain range for the sole purpose of providing hunters with trophies. \u00a0In 2004, I took a very active role in opposing AGFD when they initiated a plan to kill four lions that they deemed to be a threat to public safety in Sabino Canyon on the outskirts of Tucson \u2013 despite the fact that these lions had demonstrated no aggressive behavior. Then in 2006, I again spoke out against plans by U.S. Fish and Wildlife to allow AGFD to open a hunting season on lions on the Kofa Wildlife Refuge, once again for the purpose of reducing predation on bighorn sheep. I will talk about each of these events throughout this essay and at the end I have provided a link to the position papers I wrote on each.<\/p>\n Before discussing my comments on the panel, I should probably say something about our moderator, David Baron, and his book, The Beast in the Garden. <\/em><\/p>\n The Beast in the Garden <\/em>provides a thorough and very graphic account of the killing of an eighteen-year old high school athlete named Scott Lancaster by a mountain lion in Idaho Springs, Colorado on January 24, 1991. Baron\u2019s thesis is a simple one amidst a complex issue, namely that local nature loving people – especially in the nearby city of Boulder \u2013 purposefully created a paradise (the \u201cGarden\u201d) for deer and other prey animals at the rural-urban interface, which in turn attracted mountain lions (the \u201cBeast\u201d).\u00a0 He argues that this close proximity to humans created habituated mountain lions that lost their fear of humans and posed an obvious threat to public safety.\u00a0 He further argues that the liberal attitudes of the area \u2013 which included an aversion to killing lions \u2013 created a scenario which tied the hands of local wildlife and law enforcement people, thus making the Lancaster tragedy inevitable. Baron provides a detailed account of the events leading up to the death of Lancaster and documents the efforts of those who attempted unsuccessfully tried to raise the alarm. The Beast in the Garden<\/em> proved popular but controversial in some quarters.\u00a0 The vast majority of reviews were favorable.\u00a0 Others, most notably by Wendy J. Keefover Ring, Director of the Carnivore Protection Program, and Ken Logan \u2013 one of the nation\u2019s leading lion biologists \u2013 were not. The impact of The Beast in the Garden <\/em>is undeniable. In some ways this book was the Jaws <\/em>of its time period, instilling in some people fear – or more likely reinforcing a pre-existing media-driven fear – of lions, and reinforcing the belief that we need to kill more cougars to make the world safer for humans.\u00a0 AGFD, for example, used The Beast in the Garden <\/em>in its propaganda campaign to justify their killing of the cougars in Sabino Canyon and elsewhere.<\/p>\n I first read The Beast in the Garden <\/em>when it was initially released. I received it as a Christmas present and read the entire book that day.\u00a0 I found this book so compelling that I could not set it down. Baron is an outstanding writer and the story he weaves is a gripping one. While I do not agree with his before mentioned basic premises, and while there were specific items that I had particular problems with \u2013 for example his acceptance of a ridiculous theory proposed by a genetic scholar at the University of Arizona that Native Americans drove Pleistocene mountain lions into extinction \u2013 I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it. Anyone reading this book, however, should accept the fact that Baron is a journalist.\u00a0 He writes for a popular audience and he writes to sell books.\u00a0 He employs a descriptive style of prose that some may think is \u201cover the top.\u201d\u00a0 His graphic description of Scott Lancaster\u2019s body after he was killed reads like a script from the TV crime drama CSI, and some lion advocates have deemed his language to be needlessly inflammatory.\u00a0 But the fact is that death by a lion is a brutal affair and the power and potential deadliness of this perfect predator should be appreciated. \u00a0And while Baron is not a lion expert and some may rightfully question some of his assumptions and conclusions, The Beast in the Garden <\/em>is a very well researched and evenly presented work.<\/p>\n The panel covered a lot of ground and it is impossible in this essay to go over everything that we discussed, and often debated. \u00a0\u00a0Consequently, I will only focus this paper on five points that I made and wish to elaborate on.\u00a0 \u00a0I will also restrict this essay largely to the main conservation issues of the cougar debate, rather than to the Native American components of my remarks. \u00a0My comments in regard to Native American views about cougars are basically the same as what I have written about jaguars and the Macho B tragedy found elsewhere on this blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n With that background, here are the following major points that I made during the panel discussion \u201cLiving with the Beast:\u201d<\/p>\n This is the great \u201curban legend\u201d of modern day mountain lion conservation and management.<\/p>\n Baron\u2019s opening question to our panel was directed at Patricia Dorsey, a Wildlife Manager for Colorado Division of Wildlife.\u00a0 He asked her a simple question: \u201cHow many mountain lions are there in Colorado?\u201d\u00a0 Dorsey\u2019s reply:\u00a0 \u201cWe don\u2019t know how many mountain lions we have, but we know we have more than ever before.\u201d\u00a0 Her response was typical of people working in the wildlife management field. One of the great myths being perpetuated by state wildlife agencies throughout the country is that cougar populations are exploding out of control.\u00a0 Admittedly human-cougar encounters <\/em>have increased, and cougars are being sighted in places where they have not been seen in years, such as in the Midwest. \u00a0But this is not necessarily evidence, and certainly not proof, of increasing cougar populations.<\/p>\n Mountain lions tend to be secretive, cryptic animals that in most cases avoid humans. They generally live in the most rugged and inaccessible habitat imaginable.\u00a0 It is impossible to estimate cougar populations. At best, wildlife agencies can only make extremely rough estimates of the number of the big cats that live within the boundaries of their states.<\/p>\n Increased cougar sightings, and increased cougar- human contact are a direct result of human encroachment into mountain lion territory \u2013 a reality that at least one of my fellow panelists, Mr. Zink, vehemently disagreed with. \u00a0Humans are invading and taking over cougar habitat at an unprecedented pace.\u00a0 We are building our homes, ranches, and recreational retreats in cougar country.\u00a0 In addition there are more hikers, backpackers, skiers, and people on ATVs and snowmobiles in the backcountry than ever before. \u00a0\u00a0Every piece of land that is cleared for a new housing development or shopping mall, every highway or recreational back road created, is cougar habitat lost.\u00a0 The big cats are simply running out of real estate and have to go somewhere, and everywhere they are pushed to, they encounter humans. Consequently, mountain lions are finding themselves increasingly coming into contact \u2013 and conflict \u2013 with humans, a species which most have no prior experience with.<\/p>\n Biologists generally recognize three classes within a cougar population: resident <\/em>male and females, transient<\/em> male and females, and dependent offspring \u2013 the kittens of resident females. Resident adults tend to be mature permanent residents living within a home range <\/em>\u2013 a geographical area of land that could be up to 500 square miles in size. Although cougars are generally solitary, kittens stay with their mothers until they are almost two years old. \u00a0They then generally disperse – especially the males who are no longer tolerated by the dominant resident male – to become transients. It is largely the transients that humans are seeing and encountering.\u00a0 A shrinking land base means less country for young lions to establish new home ranges.<\/p>\n Mountain lions are not inherently dangerous, and in the vast majority of cases in which they enter into urban settings do not pose a threat to humans.\u00a0 This remains true even in cases of actual contact with humans.\u00a0 Cougar attacks are almost unheard of. \u00a0Over the past 100 years there have been a total of 14 humans killed in the entire United States and Canada by mountain lions. This is less than two people per year despite tens of thousands of actual mountain lion-human encounters.<\/p>\n In contrast during this same time period 15,000 people have been killed by lightning, 10,000 by deer (mostly in deer-vehicle collisions), and 4,000 by bees.\u00a0 Every year <\/em>in the United States on average, 43,000 people die in automobile accidents, 24,000 die from accidental poisoning, 17,000 from accidental falls \u2013 mostly at home, and 3000 drown. In an average year in the United States over 700 people die in bicycle accidents, 20 are killed in domestic dog attacks, 20 by hunting accidents, 11 due to snake bites and allergic reaction to the anti-venom used in the treatment of snake bites, and believe it or not \u2013 as our moderator Dave Baron pointed out – an average of 3 people are killed each year by escalators, and 2 more each year by having vending machines fall on them.\u00a0\u00a0 In sum, the comparative chance of being killed by a mountain lion is astronomically slim.<\/p>\n Mountain lions that enter into urban areas are not out hunting humans, they are hunting space. They want only to be left alone.\u00a0 Most of these animals are simply transients on the move that \u201cwander\u201d into cities.\u00a0 If left alone, they generally will wander out.<\/p>\n In the case of the before mentioned Sabino lions, the Aspen forest fire, the worst in the history of the Santa Catalina Mountains, had pushed wildlife down into the Tucson Basin.\u00a0 At the time I was living in Tucson and hiked Sabino Canyon close to 80 times a year.\u00a0 On most days I would see two or three deer.\u00a0 Soon after the fire I began to see perhaps as many as twenty.\u00a0 With the deer, I knew would come the lions. I wrote a letter to AGFD bringing up this issue, and they never responded. Soon afterwards hikers began to report encounters with cougars that \u201ccame too close\u201d or \u201cshowed no fear.\u201d In comments that made the front page of the newspaper, Larry Raley, the head ranger of the Santa Catalina Rancher District, shrilly proclaimed \u201cthat an attack was eminent\u201d and closed the park.\u00a0 AGFD announced their intent to go in and kill all of the lions. \u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n I should add here that Sabino is not truly an \u201curban\u201d setting but rather a natural area in which cougars belonged. <\/em>Barely one mile into the park and the land is officially designated as \u201cwilderness.\u201d\u00a0 The houses that have sprung up along the borders of Sabino have encroached <\/em>on mountain lion habitat.\u00a0 The vast majority of the people who live in this area love and understand nature and spoke out against the removal of the lions.\u00a0 Others \u2013 those few who desire a safe and sanitized natural world \u2013 wanted the lions dead or removed.\u00a0 AGFD \u2013 in what can only be deemed \u201cpropaganda\u201d – made much of the fact that there was an elementary school in this area and that the cougars posed a threat to the children.\u00a0 At one point several people were reported in the newspaper as having seen a cougar on school grounds. Defenders of Wildlife asked me to investigate this alleged sighting.\u00a0 I searched the area completely around the school and found no cougar tracks despite having excellent terrain to track.\u00a0 I also located one of the three people who had reported seeing the \u201ccougar\u201d on the school grounds and this woman, who was very familiar with the wildlife of Sabino and who often saw bobcats on her own property. She emphatically told me that the animal she saw and reported to AGFD was actually a bobcat, not a mountain lion.\u00a0 Her two companions, who had never seen either a bobcat or a cougar in their lives, told AGFD that it was a mountain lion.\u00a0 AGFD chose to believe her two companions.<\/p>\n The only thing that AGFD seems to have had right during this tragic series of events was the correct number of cougars that had come down into Sabino, four. I went into Sabino and found the tracks of four different cougars: One set of tracks I assumed belonged to a very large male (Some trackers claim they can distinguish between male and female cougars, I can\u2019t). \u00a0\u00a0Three other set of tracks were considerably smaller and\u00a0\u00a0 I assumed this might be a female and her two nearly grown kittens. It was later it was proven that all three of these smaller tracks belonged to cats that were approximately two years or younger.<\/p>\n I found by tracking the big male that he kept to himself and completely avoided people.\u00a0 He obviously knew that humans meant trouble. It was the younger cougars that were being seen by people.\u00a0 Contrary to what every wildlife agency wants people to believe, wild animals, including cougars, do not possess an inherent fear of humans.\u00a0 Fear is a learned <\/em>emotion. All cats are curious and cougars are no exception. Mountain lions are well known for following people for no other reason than to simply observe them.\u00a0 Younger cats are especially curious. \u00a0\u00a0Certainly these adolescent cougars had no prior experience with \u2013 and consequently no reason to fear people.\u00a0 In my estimation the Sabino lions were guilty of no more than being curious young animals. At the peak of the controversy AGFD released a descriptive list of sightings and encounters that had occurred as a means of justifying their actions.\u00a0 Paul Beier, a professor of wildlife biology at Northern Arizona University, and a mountain lion specialist who had made extensive studies of cougar attacks on people, reviewed the list and determined that the lions were not acting unusual and posed no apparent danger to people.\u00a0 Public sentiment also leaned heavily in favor of the cougars.\u00a0 85% of the letters to the editor of the Arizona Daily Star newspaper and letters sent to AGFD were critical of plans to kill or even remove the cougars from Sabino.\u00a0 Governor Janet Napolitano and several elected state representatives also intervened, calling for AGFD to call off their hunt and seek other solutions.\u00a0 Despite the public and political opposition, AGFD carried out their plans, setting out snares and also bringing in a professional lion hunter with hounds.\u00a0 In the end they trapped one young female near a deer she had killed. This female was taken to the Southwest Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Scottsdale to live out the rest of her life in captivity.\u00a0 AGFD would later kill the two other young females and estimated their ages to be less than two years of age. \u00a0Again, these lions did nothing wrong other than approaching hikers on the trail.\u00a0 Neither showed any aggressive behavior, yet both were still shot and killed by AGFD officers. The big male fortunately escaped their best efforts to hunt him down.<\/p>\n The case of the Sabino lions stands as a classic case of a state wildlife agency over-reacting due to fear and ignorance. Government agencies like AGFD are always fearful of being sued for failing to protect people from the hazards \u2013 and perceived hazards – of the outdoors. In 1996 a bear had mauled a camper named Anna L. Knochel in the Santa Catalina Mountains.\u00a0 Earlier this bear had been deemed a nuisance to other campers and had been captured and relocated by AGFD only to return.\u00a0 AGFD was sued by the girl\u2019s family who were awarded a $2.5 million settlement.\u00a0 After this landmark court decision it became standard operating procedure for AGFD \u2013 and undoubtedly many other state wildlife agencies throughout the nation \u2013 to kill, not relocate, bears and lions that came into contact with people. My own research into AGFD and its handling of \u201cnuisance\u201d black bears, revealed that prior to the Knochel case the department relocated approximately 85% of such bears, whereas after the Knochel case, they euthanized approximately 85%.<\/p>\n I understand that a mountain lion entering into an actual <\/em>populated urban area does indeed pose a potential<\/em> \u2013 though still remote – threat to humans.\u00a0 No one wants a lion attack and a human mauling or death.\u00a0 There is also the even greater likelihood that the animal itself will be harmed in terms of perhaps being injured or killed by an automobile, or being electrocuted by telephone transformers and wires.\u00a0 In some cases it might be possible to allow such cougars to leave on their own, or to \u201chaze\u201d them out of the area. \u00a0\u00a0In other cases it might be more practical for wildlife officials to physically remove and relocate the cougar themselves.\u00a0 If treed \u2013 which cougars in urban areas often are – this can be done in the same manner they are captured and radio-collared in the wild for research, through the use of a tranquilizer gun. Generally speaking, a treed cougar hit with a dart remains in the tree until the drugs have taken effect.\u00a0 If on the ground, capture guns \u2013 net guns \u2013 can be used.\u00a0 In extreme cases, perhaps in regard to a cougar wandering deep in a heavily populated urban setting and only if no other option available, the lethal removal of a cougar is justified.<\/p>\n In the case of the Sabino Canyon lions, an example of cougars moving into a natural area adjacent to human occupation, every option was open to AGFD, but they chose only to consider the lethal \u2013 the easy \u2013 option. In a personal letter to me, Harley Shaw expressed his option might hazing might work.\u00a0 Many others suggested this option but AGFD refused to even consider it stating that hazing \u201cnever worked.\u201d The capture and relocation of the Sabino lions \u2013 the most obvious and workable solution \u2013 was also rejected by AGFD on the grounds that the relocated cougars would simply come in conflict with the resident cougars in the areas they were released.\u00a0 This excuse also was misleading and dishonest.\u00a0 To begin with, all of the Sabino Canyon cougars were females which generally are not as territorial as males.\u00a0 Also, AGFD keeps records of every cougar legally killed by hunters.\u00a0 Any captured cat could simply be released in an area in which the prior resident occupant had been \u201charvested.\u201d<\/p>\n The fact is that while we know almost everything about the natural history of mountain lions, we know almost nothing about mountain lion behavior.<\/p>\n Over the years numerous biologists \u2013 Maurice G. Hornocker, Harley Shaw, and Kenneth A. Logan and Linda L. Sweanor to name just a few – have studied and written extensively on the natural history of mountain lions.\u00a0 But most of this research has been very basic biology: preferred habitat and prey species, migration patterns, and reproductive information.\u00a0 Moreover, almost all of this research has been financed through and driven by state wildlife agencies. The goal of these agencies is to manage mountain lions as a game animal for hunting, or to manage the impact of cougars on other preferred hunting species like deer, elk, and bighorn sheep, or to protect livestock. \u00a0In other words, most cougar research is designed to learn more about them in order to more effectively kill them, but not really understand them.<\/p>\n Wildlife mangers generally mask their ignorance of cougar behavior by attributing everything to instinct. <\/em>In sum, they tell us that mountain lions do what mountain lions do because they can\u2019t help it.\u00a0 Some innate impulse triggered by a given stimulus drives them to action.<\/p>\n The very concept and popular use of the term instinct \u2013 which I see as being only the initial \u201ccall to action\u201d \u2013 has all but out lived its usefulness in attempting to understand animal behavior, and certainly tells us nothing about mountain lion behavior specifically.\u00a0 It is quite obvious that cougar behavior \u2013 in fact, almost all animal behavior \u2013 is more a product of conscious thought processes. A mountain lion stalking a deer for example is a thinking creature whose mind is translating multiple scenarios and outcomes: \u201cWhich deer in this herd should I focus my attention to?\u201d \u201cWhat is the best approach to reaching this deer?\u201d \u201cWhat are the chances of me catching this deer?\u201d \u201cMight I injure myself in the process?\u201d\u00a0 While a cougar may not be thinking these things in human terms, he is most certainly thinking.<\/p>\n In recent years the field of cognitive ethology <\/em>has risen to prominence. As noted earlier, cognitive ethology is the study of the emotional, and consequently the behavioral lives of animals.\u00a0 It starts with the premise that every animal is an intelligent individual, and that animal behavior is largely the product of two separate but related processes: thought and emotions.\u00a0 In sum, cognitive ethologists believe that animals possess conscious rational thought processes \u2013 not simply \u201cinstinct\u201d \u2013 as advocated by most scientists.\u00a0 This thought process includes a degree of self-awareness on the part of the animal. Cognitive ethologists also generally believe that animals are sentient, that they are capable of experiencing a wide range of emotions that are in many ways comparable to those enjoyed by humans: love, hate, fear, joy, sadness, jealousy, and empathy to name a few.<\/p>\n Cognitive ethology represents the \u201cbrave new world\u201d of wildlife studies.\u00a0 Yet most wildlife managers continue to deny that animals possess either rational thought or emotions. \u00a0\u00a0They accuse those who think otherwise of engaging in \u201canthropomorphism\u201d \u2013 of attributing human qualities to animals.\u00a0 Perhaps this is not a bad thing. Perhaps it is time that we begin to view \u2013 and study \u2013 animals in a different way. \u00a0As it stands now, much of what passes for wildlife \u201cresearch\u201d is little more than an exercise in repetition and redundancy.\u00a0 In reality, we have learned little that is new, and almost nothing of importance, about cougars in recent decades. How much more can one learn a radio-collared lion?<\/p>\n Historically, mountain lions and other predators were killed on sight by the early Euro-American settlers. With the advent of large scale cattle ranching in the American west during the 1880s, predator control was carried out with a passion that bordered on near-religious zealotry.\u00a0 The federal government\u2019s Predatory Animal and Rodent Control agency (PARC) led this war of extermination with guns, traps, and poisons, and by the 1930s grizzly bears and wolves were all but extirpated throughout most of their range.\u00a0 Mountain lions escaped a similar fate only because they tended to inhabit the more rugged and remote mountainous areas.\u00a0 PARC eventually morphed into Department of Agriculture-based agency named Animal Damage Control (ADC).\u00a0 With a desire to appear more politically correct, ADC recently changed its name to \u201cWildlife Services.\u201d This organization \u2013 one of the most secretive agencies in the United States government with an annual budget of more than $100 million – $30 million of which is actually devoted to lethal animal control \u2013 killed nearly 3 \u00bd million animals in 2009.\u00a0\u00a0 Although their \u201cstock in trade\u201d is coyotes \u2013 about 90,000 every year \u2013 Wildlife Services also kills approximately 340 cougars annually.<\/p>\n Wildlife officials commonly state that they manage mountain lions using \u201cthe best science available.\u201d\u00a0 Nothing can be further from the truth. In reality, politics, not science, drives mountain lion management, and western state wildlife managers serve two masters: hunters and livestock ranchers.<\/p>\n Wildlife management is a numbers game and wildlife managers are trained to think in terms of populations. <\/em>In order to maintain an adequate number of deer, elk, bighorn sheep, or other ungulates to satisfy the desires of hunters, rules and regulations are established to make this possible.\u00a0 For example, hunting seasons and bag limits are set.\u00a0 Also, the hunting of ungulates is also banned during the spring when the females are giving birth to, or are accompanied by their young. These rules are established to maintain a healthy \u201cbreeding stock\u201d to insure a maximum \u201ccarrying capacity\u201d \u2013 the maximum number of animals a particular geographic area can sustain.\u00a0 The ultimate goal is to provide a maximum number of targets for future hunting.\u00a0 Mountain lions enter into the equation because they eat ungulates and are the \u201cX\u201d factor \u2013 the factor that cannot be controlled.<\/p>\n Mountain lions are now classified as a big game species in almost every state and are managed accordingly with set hunting seasons and bag limits.\u00a0 The main exceptions are Texas and California.\u00a0 In Texas, although cougars are classified as being a big game species, the state treats the big cat as \u201cvermin\u201d and allows them to be killed whenever and wherever they are encountered with very few restrictions.\u00a0 In California, it is the opposite, mountain lions are protected.\u00a0 In 1990 the state passed Proposition 117 \u2013 a citizen\u2019s initiative which banned the sport hunting of cougars.<\/p>\n Hunters generally support mountain lion and other predator control. They view mountain lions as being competitors and wrongly believe that reducing the number of cougars will result in a corresponding increase in ungulate populations. Most hunters who kill a cougar believe that they are doing both the ungulates and themselves a favor. \u00a0State wildlife agencies also accept this false logic and encourage the hunting of cougars, or in some cases, carry out their own aggressive cougar \u201ccontrol\u201d programs. \u00a0A good example of this was an AGFD program I mentioned earlier.\u00a0 In 2001, AGFD \u2013 in what they labeled a \u201cscientific experiment\u201d – proposed killing up to 36 mountain lions \u2013 pretty much the entire population – in and near the Four Peaks Wilderness area.\u00a0\u00a0 The purpose of this slaughter was to cleanse the area of predators in order to increase the survival rate for recently reintroduced desert bighorn sheep.\u00a0 AGFD \u2013 over the objections of numerous biologists, including its own, initiated the sheep reintroduction program in areas they admitted were \u201csecondary sheep habitat,\u201d in some cases where previous reintroduction attempts had failed, and even in areas \u2013 including the Four Peaks Wilderness – where sheep had never historically inhabited.\u00a0 They did so largely due to encouragement and financial support from the Arizona Desert Bighorn Sheep Society \u2013 a small yet very wealthy and politically influential organization of sheep hunters. When regular sport hunters were unable to kill enough lions, AGFD hired a professional lion hunter \u2013 a convicted felon who had recently lost his guide license for illegally killing 19 cougars \u2013 to do the job for them.<\/p>\n It is my opinion that the preemptive killing of mountain lions or any predator for the sole purpose of increasing game animals is unjustifiable and unethical. If an individual predator can be proven to be killing a disproportionate number of threatened or endangered animals \u2013 perhaps a lion killing within a certain population of bighorn sheep \u2013 and if no other alternative exists \u2013 then and only then I would support the killing of that individual lion.<\/p>\n State wildlife agencies also have to keep livestock ranchers happy as well.\u00a0 They do so in order to insure that these private land owners continue to keep open their ranchland to hunters.\u00a0 Mountain lions do occasionally kill livestock and are generally hated by ranchers.\u00a0 Most states issue depredation tags to ranchers that grant them permission to destroy specific lions that are killing livestock.\u00a0 In practice, however, ranchers \u2013 at least in Arizona – seldom apply for such tags and simply kill lions on sight. The \u201cOld West\u201d adage of \u201cshoot, shovel, and shut up\u201d comes into play and I strongly suspect that for every lion that is legally killed under a depredation tag, another 10 are taken and never reported.\u00a0 I know of one rancher in southeast Arizona who kills a number of cougars every year. State agencies tend to simply turn a blind eye to such events. \u00a0\u00a0The before-mentioned professional lion hunter who had been arrested for killing 19 cougars illegally in Arizona \u2013 only to be later employed by AGFD to kill more lions – had been initially hired and secretly paid by livestock ranchers.<\/p>\n In Texas, a \u201cperfect storm\u201d of special interests combine to create a situation where cougars, as one hunting website boasts, \u201cmay be legally taken in any number, by any method, 365 days a year!\u201d \u00a0In addition to responding to the usual clamor by hunters and cattle ranchers to kill mountain lions, Texas Game and Fish also work to protect the interest of land owners who engage in \u201cdeer ranching\u201d – a multi-million dollar industry.\u00a0 99% of deer hunting in Texas takes place on private ranches where deer inhabit large areas of land bordered by high fences where they are managed like livestock.\u00a0 In such facilities deer are genetically engineered and are fed vitamin enriched pellets throughout the year to assure maximum antler growth and body weight. \u00a0They are then are baited and shot over stands by hunters who pay thousands of dollars to pick and choose the trophy they want. Success rates are better than 95%. \u00a0\u00a0This is not \u201csport hunting,\u201d it is big business and clearly a cougar that can potentially kill and eat a $10,000 trophy buck is a liability risk that can not be tolerated.<\/p>\n Without question Texas and Arizona are the two states that have the greatest anti-predator bias and where mountain lion mismanagement is at its worst.\u00a0 The fact is, however, that most western state wildlife agencies hold similar views.\u00a0 As noted earlier, no state wildlife agency allows the hunting of any ungulate in the spring.\u00a0 Yet almost every state \u2013 including Washington State – allows the spring hunting of lions and bears. As a result, untold numbers of lion kittens and bear cubs are orphaned and left to die of starvation when their mothers are killed by spring hunters. The Cougar Foundation reports that the Washington Department of Game and Fish by its own admissions estimates that 26 lion kittens have been left orphaned by spring lion hunts over the past four years.\u00a0 This is undoubtedly a very, very conservative estimate.<\/p>\n It is my opinion that the spring hunting of any animal is never justified.<\/p>\n Mountain lions are mismanaged in other ways as well.\u00a0 As noted earlier, hunting seasons and bag limits are created on ungulates to maintain healthy populations of those animals.\u00a0 No wildlife agency talks about maintaining a carrying capacity of cougars and efforts are often made to kill as many as possible. In the before mentioned case of the Sabino lions AGFD never once considered the ramifications of removing three females from the Santa Catalina mountain range.<\/p>\n Increasingly, state wildlife agencies have come under scrutiny by the general public.\u00a0 \u00a0Nowhere is this more evident than in the questioning of wildlife policies designed to manage predators, especially cougars.\u00a0 Mountain lions are charismatic animals that are widely popular with the general public.\u00a0 The majority of people \u2013 most of whom do not hunt \u2013 do not support killing cougars to benefit hunters or livestock ranchers.\u00a0 Even lions that enter into urban areas tend to be given the benefit of the doubt. In California, the before mentioned Proposition 117 was in fact a \u201ccitizen\u2019s revolt\u201d over what most people saw as being the mismanagement of cougars by California Department of Fish and Game.\u00a0 Wildlife agencies decry such citizen initiatives as meddling in their affairs and limiting their ability to do their job.\u00a0 Wildlife management, they claim, \u201cshould be left in the hand of the professionals.\u201d Such claims, however, would carry more weight if wildlife was indeed managed professionally and scientifically.\u00a0 As noted earlier, politics and not science, decides most wildlife management decisions. \u00a0This is especially true as it applies to the control of predators.\u00a0 In Arizona, for example, AGFD is headed by a governing board that is appointed by the governor of the state.\u00a0 The only qualification for membership on this board \u2013 other than political connections \u2013 is that the person must hold a hunting license. This pretty much precludes anyone who has a scientific background in wildlife management.\u00a0 Consequently, every member of the state board is a hunter, and most have tended to be ranchers as well.<\/p>\n I should state here that I am not anti-hunter, anti-hunting, or even anti cougar hunting.\u00a0 In fact, I am a hunter.\u00a0 I was introduced to the sport of hunting as a boy by my father and brother and have hunted all of my life. \u00a0Hunting played a major role in forming the type of person I am today.\u00a0 It got me out of the house and into the natural world which I fell in love with.\u00a0 In time, the hunt, and certainly the killing, became less important as I opened my eyes and mind to the wonders that surrounded me.\u00a0 I became a student of the natural world and devoted myself to understanding and protecting it.\u00a0 I still hunt today and understand the enjoyment that comes from being outdoors and matching your skills and knowledge against the animals you seek.\u00a0 I have never hunted lions and don\u2019t care to, but I don\u2019t fault those who do.\u00a0 Most mountain lion hunting is done with trained hounds.\u00a0 As someone who has hunted behind bird dogs and rabbit hounds all of my life, I can also understand the excitement and satisfaction a cougar hunter must feel following a pack of hounds he has personally trained \u2013 hounds that were born for the hunt – hounds who can only know happiness and self-fulfillment in their own lives if they are engaged in the chase.\u00a0 But I admit that this is where my understanding stops.\u00a0 A successful lion hunt ends with the cougar \u201ctreed\u201d or brought to bay against the rocks.\u00a0 Unlike most hunting, the ultimate object of a lion hunt is simply to kill and take a trophy. One source within the AGFD estimates that over one-third of the cougars killed in his state are taken through what are called \u201cwill call\u201d hunts.\u00a0 In such a hunt a professional guide will have his hounds tree a cougar.\u00a0 Then he will telephone a hunter who only then purchases a cougar tag and comes to shoot the lion out of the tree.\u00a0 Often the cougar is kept treed for days until the \u201csportsman\u201d arrives.\u00a0 Such hunts are illegal, but common in every state. I do not see the \u201csport\u201d in shooting a terrified animal out of a tree. Whereas I eat the deer or pheasant I kill, lion hunters take only the head and pelt and throw away the rest of the animal.\u00a0 Yes, as Patricia Dorsey insisted during our panel discussion, the state of Colorado requires hunters to remove the entire carcass of the lion they have killed from the field, but they cannot legislate that the hunter actually eat the lion. In reality, the meat is almost always thrown away.\u00a0 I know a lot of mountain lion hunters, and I have yet to hear one of them tell me how delicious cougar meat is, or the best way to prepare it. \u00a0If the lion \u201chunt\u201d itself is the sport \u2013 why is the kill so important and necessary?\u00a0\u00a0 Why is the cougar not simply allowed to go free to chase another day? There is something deeper here at play, something troubling that I do not quite comprehend. \u00a0What drives mankind to consider the act of killing in itself a sport?\u00a0 Each year over 5000 mountain lions are killed by sport hunters in western North America \u2013 most of which are then posed and preserved for eternity in ridiculous looking rugs or mounts with snarling faces to reflect their supposed fierceness \u2013 and by implication \u2013 the hunter\u2019s bravery.\u00a0 Quite possibly nearly that many cougars are also killed each year by state and federal agents, and by ranchers for the purpose of supposedly protecting livestock, or to increase the number of game animals for hunters.\u00a0 In contrast, as noted earlier, cougars have killed perhaps 14 humans in the past 100 years.\u00a0 In reflecting upon these things the question emerges:\u00a0 Who is the real beast in this equation?\u00a0 Is it the cougar that kills only for food and survival?\u00a0 Or is it the human that kills for enjoyment and trophies?<\/p>\n Wildlife agencies need to revise their protocols as to how they deal with lions that enter into urban areas.\u00a0 This includes using \u2013 and if need be developing \u2013 alternative non-lethal methods of capturing and relocating such cougars. As noted earlier in the Sabino Canyon situation, Harley Shaw – perhaps the nation\u2019s foremost cougar expert and a lion biologist for 27 years with AGFD – advised trying to first haze the animals away from people.\u00a0 AGFD steadfastly refused trying to do so.<\/p>\n Wildlife management must also acknowledge the inherent rights <\/em>that mountain lions \u2013 indeed all animals \u2013 possess.\u00a0 During our panel discussion at Fort Lewis College, Dave Baron asked each of us the question: \u201cShould mountain lions have rights?\u201d\u00a0 I was the only one who answered affirmatively.<\/p>\n I admit to being a spiritual person and that my spirituality has been forged from a life time of living among Native American people.\u00a0 I believe that the same Creative Power that made humans, also made cougars, and that we generally possess the same \u201cnatural rights.\u201d I believe that animals\u2019 like cougars possess basic rights that stand alone.\u00a0 Their rights are apart from, and independent of, the desires of humans. They possess the inherent right to live and pursue their own purpose, a purpose perhaps known only to the Creator.\u00a0 In other words, a cougar has the basic right to be a cougar.<\/p>\n In contrast, Judeo-Christian tradition \u2013 upon which western science and modern day wildlife management is based \u2013 tells us that man was created in \u201cGod\u2019s image.\u201d This separate and elevated creation sets the table for how we deal with other life forms.\u00a0 The Book of Genesis goes on to state that humankind is given \u201cdominion over the fishes of the sea, the birds of the air, and the beasts of the earth.\u201d In sum, all life on Earth has been placed here solely for our own use and pleasure.<\/p>\n The time has come to stop treating wildlife as private property.<\/p>\n In addition to controlling lions, we need to control people. We need, for example, to bring a halt to our encroachment into cougar country.\u00a0 States, counties, and cities must curb urban expansion and its consequent destruction of habitat.\u00a0 Any planning for growth and economic development must seriously take into account the needs of wildlife.<\/p>\n Everyone wants to move into those beautiful wooded valleys and canyons.\u00a0 Everyone wants to look outside their back window and see Bambi and Thumper contently munching on the corn, apples, and lettuce they have put out for them.\u00a0 But when a cougar shows up and snatches one of those cute and cuddly wild creatures, these same people scream for blood and revenge.\u00a0 Sadly we live in a \u201crights society\u201d where we believe that it is out right as humans to live where we please and do what we please.\u00a0 But with rights always come responsibility.\u00a0 It is our responsibility as humans living in mountain lion habitat to keep our children, pets, and livestock under safe supervision and protection.\u00a0 It is also the right \u2013 the absolute duty – of the appropriate government we live under to pass and enforce laws that see to it that we do.\u00a0 If we are going to encroach on cougar habitat, it is also our absolute responsibility to take every step necessary to avoid conflict with this great predator.<\/p>\n In 2005, a group comprised of almost every leading mountain lion biologist in the country came together to complete a publication entitled Cougar Management Guidelines. <\/em>Although there are major gaps in this work, these guidelines represent the most comprehensive, sensible, and honest set of ideas yet to be advanced on how wildlife agencies should manage and deal with mountain lions \u2013 including what can be interpreted as a suggestion to end spring cougar hunting.\u00a0 One of the most important contributions offered in these guidelines are research-based recommendations as to how to determine through mountain lion \u201cbody language\u201d the risk behavior associated with various human-cougar encounters, and a suggested protocol that agencies can follow before and after such encounters take place.\u00a0 These guidelines offer great promise in the field of cougar management and hopefully this group will reconvene periodically to expand and update this document.\u00a0 In the meantime, state wildlife agencies should move to adopt these guidelines.\u00a0 Sadly, this does not seem to be the case in Arizona.\u00a0 In 2009, when AGFD released their Mountain Lion and Bear Conservation Strategies Report<\/em>, it showed no evidence \u2013 other than being listed in the bibliography \u2013 that anyone in the department even read the guidelines.<\/p>\n We fear that which we do not know or understand, and the average person knows and understands very little about mountain lions.<\/p>\n It was the eminent biologist Edward O. Wilson who in 1984 proposed the biophilia hypothesis <\/em>\u2013 namely the idea that human beings have an innate affinity for all living things. Wilson believed that we are drawn to and want to be near other forms of life.\u00a0 The biophilia hypothesis explains our inherent desire to pick up and hold a warm, fuzzy puppy.\u00a0 It explains why we go out of our way to help an injured animal. It explains why we are so fascinated with creatures of the natural world. Perhaps the biophilia hypothesis explains why as a child I spent so much of my time out of doors roaming the fields and woodlands near my home catching snakes, turtles, frogs, and salamanders.\u00a0 It probably explains why as a youth I read anything and everything I could about nature and wildlife.\u00a0 It might also explain the many hours I spent in front of the television watching Mutual of Omaha\u2019s Wild Kingdom<\/em>, The Underwater World of Jacques Cousteau, <\/em>or Walt Disney special presentations like Charlie the Lonesome Cougar. <\/em><\/p>\n Unfortunately, the age of biophilia seems to have given way to an era of biophobia.<\/em> Today \u2013 as Richard Louv tells us so brilliantly in his book Last Child in the Woods<\/em>, our young people suffer from a \u201cnature deficit disorder.\u201d\u00a0 They live in a world of computers, i-Phones, i-Pods, i-Pads, and X-boxes \u2013 all of which serve to isolate and alienate them from the natural world.\u00a0 Even worst, we seem to purposefully teach our young people to fear <\/em>not respect <\/em>nature. What most people think they know about wildlife is largely a product of the \u201creality television\u201d of Animal Planet or the Discovery Channel – once proud educational networks now reduced to trash programming geared towards terrorizing people about the dangers of the natural world and wild animals – shows with provocative and sensational titles such as \u201cWhen Animals Attack,\u201d \u201cWhen Animals Snap.\u201d \u201cUntamed and Uncut,\u201d \u201cRogue Nature,\u201d \u201cYour Worst Animal Nightmares,\u201d and the ever popular \u201cTop Ten Most Shocking Animal Attacks.\u201d All of these programs are built on a theme of animal attacks, and all have at one time or another focused on cougar attacks. If, as Marshall Macluhan once suggested, \u201cThe medium is the message,\u201d the message that networks like Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel send out today is a distorted and poisoned one.<\/p>\n Wildlife agencies, parks, and other organizations legally responsible for potential animal attacks and fearing lawsuits, also tend to purposefully spread fear-based misinformation regarding the true nature of mountain lions.\u00a0 Every one of these groups produces and then distributes untold numbers of \u201ceducational\u201d brochures which are designed to scare people away from lions.\u00a0 They exaggerate the threat from cougars, offer misleading and often false information on cougar behavior \u2013 usually \u201cwarning signs\u201d of \u201caggressive\u201d behavior – and always end with a stern message of \u201cReport all lion sightings to the proper authority.\u201d\u00a0 But as we know with the Sabino lion affair, a reported lion most often becomes a dead lion.<\/p>\n In closing this section, let me make two specific recommendations:<\/p>\n First, every state legislature should pass \u201cno fault\u201d legislation that provides blanket protection for state wildlife agencies from lawsuits involving animal attacks.\u00a0 The before-mentioned Knochel lawsuit, for example, should never have happened.\u00a0\u00a0 Removing the threat of lawsuits will allow state wildlife agencies to view and promote mountain lions as the magnificent animals they are, and not simply as legal liabilities.<\/p>\n Secondly, wildlife agencies and other entities charged with educating the public need to emphasize the positive, rather than the negative, of mountain lions and mountain lion behavior. Again, most cougar education is geared toward promoting fear, not appreciation of this amazing cat.\u00a0 We need to turn this around. Many state wildlife agencies utilize some version of a teacher education program called Project WILD.\u00a0 The goal of this program is to train public school teachers so that they can incorporate wildlife education into their classroom curriculum. For many years I was a Project WILD trainer and instructor for AGFD and can testify first hand that it is a highly effective program.\u00a0 Project WILD (AGFD eventually renamed their version Arizona WILD) does not promote or criticize hunting. \u00a0\u00a0Instead it focuses primarily on natural history and ecosystems.\u00a0 Although the \u201clessons\u201d are set and predetermined, the individual instructor is allowed a great deal of flexibility in what he or she can incorporate.\u00a0 While it is important that Project WILD instructors avoid politics, propaganda, and their own prejudices, the program can provide a great vehicle to promote a more comprehensive understanding of mountain lions and other predators.\u00a0 One thing that Project WILD can do is to direct classroom teachers to the many high quality resources and materials available to them.\u00a0 There is also an abundance of excellent materials readily accessible to teachers.\u00a0 I have listed a number of these at the end of this essay. <\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThe white man looks out at the natural world, at the animals and the plants, and he sees resources.\u00a0 The Indian looks out at the animals and plants, and he sees relatives.\u201d<\/p>\n Oren Lyons, Onondaga Nation<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The positions I have staked out in this essay, and the opinions I have expressed, are a result of a life time of being outdoors and learning about wildlife, my own research on cougars, and especially the time I have spent with Native American traditionalists and intellectuals.\u00a0 My belief that mountain lions are spiritual creations, that they are sentient beings who are motivated by rationale thought and possess inherent rights, and that they have not been placed on this earth solely for human exploitation and convenience, is based on a set of core values long held by traditional Native American cultures.\u00a0 The tribal world accepts the fact that human beings are not all that special.\u00a0 Certainly we have no elevated status or rights above that of other life forms. We are only one of many beings caught up in an intricate web of life and death comprised of a network of reciprocal and appropriate relationships.\u00a0 Cooperation, not competition, makes this web of life work for all of us. \u00a0It is this spirit of cooperation that I believe must form the foundation from which we can reestablish our relationship with the cougar.<\/p>\n The Navajos believe that when an animal appears somewhere out of place \u2013 somewhere it would normally not be found \u2013 it is bringing us a message.\u00a0 The mountain lions that are entering into our cities and urban areas are most certainly sending us a message.\u00a0 They are telling us that we must stop reducing and degrading their habitat, that we have pushed them to the brink, and that they have no where else to go.\u00a0 Hopefully humans will take this message to heart.<\/p>\n Mountain Lion Comments – KOFA<\/a><\/p>\n Comments to the Public Forum of the Sabino Canon Mountain<\/a><\/p>\n Mountain Lion Comments – Goat Mountain<\/a><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n ABC Video Publishing Company (Video). 1990. Cougar: Ghost of the Rockies. <\/em><\/p>\n Cougar Management Guidelines Working Group. 2005. Cougar Management Guidelines. <\/em>Bainbridge Island, WA: WildFutures.<\/p>\n David Baron. 2003. The Beast in the Garden: A Modern Parable of Man and Nature. <\/em>New York: W.S. Norton & Company.<\/p>\n Marc Bekoff and Cara Blessley Lowe (Editors). 2007. Listening to Cougar. <\/em>Boulder: University of Colorado Press.<\/p>\n Chris Boliano. 1995. Mountain Lion: An Unnatural History of Pumas and People. <\/em>Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books.<\/p>\n Robert H. Busch. 1996. The Cougar Almanac: A Complete Natural History of the Mountain Lion. <\/em>Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press.<\/p>\n Cougar Management Guidelines Working Group.\u00a0 2005. Cougar Management Guidelines. <\/em>Bainbridge Island, WA: WildFutures.<\/p>\n Kevin Hansen. 1992. Cougar: The American Lion. <\/em>Flagstaff, AZ: Northland Press.<\/p>\n Kenneth A. Logan and Linda A. Sweanor. 2001. Desert Puma: Evolutionary Ecology and Conservation of an Enduring Carnivore. <\/em>Washington, D.C.: Island Press.<\/p>\n Richard Louv. 2008. Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. <\/em>Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books.<\/p>\n The National Geographic Society (Video). 1996. Puma: Lions of the Andes. <\/em><\/p>\n Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. 1994. The Tribe of the Tiger: Cats and Their Culture. <\/em>New York: Simon & Schuster.<\/p>\n Harley Shaw. 2000. Soul Among Lions: The Cougar as Peaceful Adversary. <\/em> Tucson: University of Arizona Press.<\/p>\n Mountain Lion Foundation The Cougar Fund Perspectives on Mountain Lions and Mankind Severed heads of 11 mountain lions among 24 killed by Animal Damage Control on December 1988-May 1989 in the Coronado National Forest, Galiuro Mountains, Arizona.\u00a0 These lions were killed to protect livestock grazing on … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n1.\u00a0 There is no proof or evidence that mountain lion populations are increasing in the western United States.<\/em><\/h3>\n
2.\u00a0 Mountain lions that enter into urban areas do not necessarily pose a threat and do not necessarily have to be killed.<\/em><\/h3>\n
3.\u00a0 We need to learn more about mountain lion behavior.<\/em><\/h3>\n
4.\u00a0 We need to re-evaluate and change the way we manage mountain lions \u2026 and people.<\/em><\/h3>\n
5.\u00a0 We need to educate the general public about the beauty and wonder of mountain lions<\/em> \u2013 not scare them over the potential threat that they might pose.<\/em><\/h3>\n
Closing Thoughts<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Testimonies<\/h3>\n
Suggested Reading and Resource Materials<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Other Suggested Sources of Information<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\nP.O. Box 1896
\nSacramento, CA 95812
\n916-442-2600
\n800-319-7621
\nwww.mountainlion.org<\/p>\n
\nP.O. Box 122
\nJackson, WY 83001
\n307-733-0797
\n800-248-9930
\nwww.cougarfund.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"