"Whirlybird"CA Politics For years, California Mountain Lions have been an issue for anyone who lives in the mountains and foothills of California, especially if they have any type of livestock; cattle, sheep, horses, goats, and other such animals. Recently, more and more of the big cats have been moving lower due to increases in their overall population and new deer migration trails. On February 24th 2019, a large cat was seen and later removed from a neighborhood in North Natomas, which is very unusual for the generally solitary and elusive animals. Such sightings are occurring with a lot more frequency.
The number of attacks in California alone are also rising, including those that are fatal. 1889 had the first reported human death caused by a mountain lion with the next one occurring in 1909. The information on confirmed attacks and deaths isn’t solid, but there is a large change starting in 1991. After that year, the number of attacks begins rising as does the frequency of deaths. From 1991-2001, a total of six people, mostly children, were killed by mountain lions. In 1990, Proposition 117 passed which required at least $30,000 be spent to protect wildlife habitats and prohibited the sport hunting of mountain lions. With the growing risk of being attacked by cougars, I believe there needs to be a short hunting season for cougars with a small number of license being available to apply for. This would help keep cougars from getting too close to areas like Sacramento and other large cities. Under the current laws, a mountain lion can only be hunted if they have attacked and killed livestock and the owners have applied for a permit to hunt and kill the cat. Fish and Wildlife services also has to send someone out to confirm that the animals have been killed by a cougar and not by coyotes or even a bobcat. A small number of mountain lions are killed in this way a year, but it’s less than a hundred a year and has no impact on their growing population numbers, which is estimated to be between 4,000 and 6,000 in California alone. These types of massacres on livestock are actually very common for mountain lions. Most of the times, a big cat simply jumps into a pen, they can jump about 20 feet from a stand still straight up, and kill whatever they can get ahold of. Many of these types of massacres end with slaughtered livestock that the cats never bothered to eat, just kill and scatter body parts around. Since 1990’s Prop. 117, nothing has been done in any elections to change the laws regarding mountain lions in California. However, the Department of Fish and Wildlife have issued a “Human/Wildlife Interactions in California: Mountain Lion Depredation, Public Safety, and Animal Welfare” bulletin, which has three Amendments attached to it; one in 2007, then in 2013, and finally 2017. The most recent amendment in 2017 added and focused on issues involving ‘depredation,” which is the destruction and/or loss of property, mostly referring to incidents involving mountain lions killing livestock. The new amendment also focused on issues of mountain lion depredation in the Santa Ana and Santa Monica mountains due to recent land development in the areas. One of the amendment’s main focus’ is on the small pockets of mountain lion populations in Southern California that have a severe lack of genetic diversity since they are trapped in isolated regions due to freeways. The Department wants to make sure in these regions that new cougars with different genes are able to survive and bred in the regions to help prevent inbreeding. While this is great to animal rights activists and for conserving and protecting the longevity of species, it also has a down side. If a new cougar in the area is responsible for killing livestock, the livestock owners can apply for a permit to hunt and kill the cat in return. This causes issues for the Department of Fish and Wildlife, since they are expected by law to allow wronged livestock owners the permits, but they are also expected to protect the mountain lion for the benefit of the other cats in the region. The 2017 Amendment seeks to find a middle ground between the two contradictory laws since each incident is unique. The only part of the most recent election, and likely in the 2020 election as well, that has to do with hunting mountain lions or even spreading awareness of the issues apex predators can cause is likely to be found in any proposition or Act that has to do with environmental and habitat protection. Most people don’t see it as an issue or believe the attacks are tragic and unpreventable, but having a short hunting season could go a long way to helping the issue and bringing awareness to it as well.
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AuthorUndergraduate student generated content. Blog posting and updating done by Kristina Flores Victor, Assistant Professor of Political Science at CSUS Archives
March 2020
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