California Bill Would Issue Tags for Mountain Lion

[LifeNRA]

California Bill Would Issue Tags for Hunting Mountain Lions

Thursday, February 10, 2005 A new bill in California takes the first step in properly managing California`s mountain lion population. AB 24, introduced by Assemblyman Maze, would require that the California Department of Fish and Game conduct a lottery to issue tags that allow the holder to hunt mountain lions. The Department would issue two tags in every county that has an established mountain lion population. Mountain lion hunting has been banned in California since 1990, when emotion and junk science was used to persuade the public to ban hunting of the species. Since that time the population has exploded and mountain lions have been spotted in residential areas where they have attacked household pets and in a few cases, humans. AB 24 would be the first step in giving wildlife management decisions back to the professional biologists in the Department of Fish and Game. Unfortunately, the ballot measure that banned mountain lion hunting also requires a 4/5 vote of the legislature to change the status of the species. Please contact your Assemblyman and respectfully urge him/her to support this bill. You can find contact information regarding your legislator by using the “Write Your Representatives” feature at www.nraila.org.

[OJR]

It's about time those fools see what is going on! This thing still has to get through congress and signed. Pretty doubtful!!

[ParrotHead]

I've got a story a good friend of mine did for Petersens a few years back about the California cats - I'll dig it up and post it. Interesting piece.

[ParrotHead]

Here ya go....

California and the Big Cats - Three Decades of Folly
By: Dan Johnson

In 1971, California passed legislation that ended the sport hunting of mountain lions. Environmentalists celebrated and the majority of Californians, sheltered in their city apartments and suburban homes, could now watch the big cats on the nature channel secure in the knowledge the slaughter had ended. Everyone was happy, except for the hunters, ranchers, and wildlife management experts who warned of problems to come.

Five year old, Laura Small was no doubt happy too as she was playing on a spring day in 1986 in Caspers Regional Park in Orange County, until she became the first person in California to be attacked by a healthy mountain lion in nearly 100 years. Adults came to her rescue, but not in time to prevent the lion from inflicting enough damage to leave her partially paralyzed and blind in one eye.

Environmentalist and the media declared it was an isolated attack and predicted no further problems from the naturally shy and elusive animals. But just seven months later, another child was attacked in the same park and all agreed some action must be taken. It seemed clear now that lions will occasionally attack small children and stricter adult supervision was called for. So, in a typical display of modern day logic, children were banned from the park.

But the attacks had just begun. In 1994, just four years after the voters approved Proposition 117, guaranteeing the lion’s permanent protection, two women were killed in separate attacks. The lion’s defenders were forced to modify their advice. Their stance now was; mountain lions will occasionally attack not only children but also lone women. A person of larger statue and anyone in a group was deemed safe.

Most of the literature on lion country safety still states the best defense is to make oneself appear larger. The more effective solution of carrying a firearm is never mentioned.
A liberal press continues to downplay the facts and even misstated one victim’s physical statistics. They widely reported that Barbara Schoener was 5' 8" and 120 pounds when in fact, at 5’ 11" and 140-150 pounds, she was as large as a majority men. She was also a long distance runner in excellent physical condition yet was killed by an eighty pound lion.

While their advocates sought to minimize the danger, the mountain lions quickly dispelled any claims of discrimination and expanded their attacks to include all manner of people from men on bicycles to women on horseback and even people in groups, including a determined charge on three armed wildlife officers at Cuyamaca Rancho State Park. These politically correct felines even expanded their base of operations and moved into urban areas. In 1995, a seventeen-year-old girl was charged by a mountain lion in her driveway as she was getting her schoolbooks out of her car.

As the controversy over the attacks escalated, the lion advocate’s most potent defense was the fact that attacks were also on the increase in states where hunting was allowed. This argument, more than any other, was instrumental in defeating a move to repeal Proposition 117 in 1996, since pro-lion groups could by now point to two deaths and numerous attacks in other western states.

But, as with most statistics, a closer look often reveals the real story. In assessing the occurrence of unprovoked attacks, it is logical to discount incidents where the lion had some provocation or was perhaps unaware his prey was human. There have been several accounts, for example, of lions responding to turkey calls resulting in an unintentional conflict with the hunter. But if one focuses solely on unprovoked attacks in the U.S. occurring in the 20th Century, they will find that at least 80% of these took place in National and State Parks and other areas where hunting is not allowed, and where, it may be noted, the possession of firearms is routinely prohibited.

While hunting in any given area causes the lions to be more timid, the main cause of the increasing attacks is an expanding population of the species. Even the mountain lion’s staunchest supporters have been forced to admit this, though they prefer to state it as humans encroaching on the lion’s territory. Terry Mansfield, Chief of Wildlife Management at California Fish and Game, had a different perspective however when he testified before the State Senate in 1995 concerning a “substantial increase in the number of lions in areas which were long ago urbanized”.

Undeniably, most attacks are perpetrated by young animals displaced by the increasing lion populations and forced to find new territories and new prey. These lions find themselves alone for the first time in their lives and with limited hunting skills are often desperate enough to try for whatever prey presents itself, even humans.

In addition to the concern for public safety, other problems were revealed in the Senate hearings in 1995. As a result of their booming populations, lion predations on livestock and pets increased from an average of ten confirmed incidents per year prior to 1970 to 322 in 1994. A drastic decline in bighorn sheep populations during the same period was also noted and much of this decline was attributed to lion depredation.

Still, the voters decided not to return management of mountain lions back over to the experts and are now reaping the consequences. Just last year, the federal government had to step in and try to save the Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep. Since Proposition 117 prevents state agencies from killing mountain lions in defense of wildlife, U.S. Fish and Wildlife was forced to declare the sheep an Endangered Species so that federal officers could kill lions on big horn ranges.

A majority of Californians seem willing to ignore the consequences of continued protection in order minimize the killing of mountain lions. Ironic considering an average of only 59 lions per year were harvested by hunters prior to the ban, with an additional one to five problem lions killed each year by Fish and Game. While in 1994 alone, California Fish and Game killed 131 lions under a public safety and livestock depredation clause in Proposition 117.

An amazing footnote to this 30-year-old controversy, especially set against the backdrop of a nationwide concern for school safety, is the widely accepted policy in California that the presence of a mountain lion on school grounds is not just cause for the animal’s removal. Official procedure is to simply notify the public of the lion’s presence.

[LifeNRA]

Thanks for posting this! I am sending this also to my friends!