California Mountain Lion

California Wildlife Protection Coalition

Mountain Lion Information

Fair Game?

I was watching her eyes. They were dead. Finally, we realized that her last act had been to deny the hounds her body by taking a death grip on a limb with her teeth. I climbed up to the tree, felt her hard body, and pushed her out to the hounds.
American Hunter Magazine, December 1991

Mountain lions are cautious, elusive creatures. Proposition 197 brings back the hunting of these animals for sport. For large sums of money, a hunter hires a professional tracker and his pack of hounds fitted with radio collars. In a remote area, a wild cougar is pursued by the dogs until, frantic and exhausted, the mountain lion climbs a tree in desperation. In his vehicle, the tracker follows the radio signals at a distance. The cougar may remain treed for days, until the hunter can be called to the scene. Sometimes the cougar is shot in the paws by the tracker to ensure that it will remain alive, but immobilized, while the client-hunter flies in from out-of-state. Finally, a handgun is used to kill the cougar at point-blank range.

California's current law designates the mountain lion as a specially protected mammal, a classification that simply means that it is not a game or trophy animal, and may not be killed by hunters for sport. The law was passed overwhelmingly in 1990 by the voters of California, under Proposition 117, and was intended to protect California's cougars from cruel and indiscriminate trophy hunting by people lacking training in wildlife management.

Current law also requires the California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) to remove or take any mountain lion, or authorize an appropriate local agency with public safety responsibilities to remove or take any mountain lion that is perceived to be an imminent threat to public health or safety.

Mountain lions can be killed in California when they pose a risk to people, property, pets, or livestock. In 1994 alone, 122 mountain lions were killed under depredation permits issued by the California Department of Fish and Game.

The gun groups own Prop. 197

DFG is dependent on trophy hunting enthusiasts for direct fee support, and relies on trophy hunting lobbyists from the Gun Owners of California, the National Rifle Association (NRA), and Safari Club for influence on elected officials, who are in turn responsible for the department's budget. These groups advocate trophy hunting of mountain lions purely for sport, and hope that DFG's failure to appropriately manage the lion population will create such a climate of fear that the public will reluctantly reinstate a massive hunt.

In the latest issue of DFG's publication Outdoor California, Terry Mansfield, chief of the wildlife management division of the California Department of Fish and Game, is quoted as saying that, "recreational hunting of mountain lions would not be expected to prevent public safety threats unless it involved removal of a significant portion of the mountain lion population."

The DFG has failed to do its job. They have been slow to act to create a balanced, humane, and scientific approach to the management of mountain lion populations in California. Such a selective and discriminating approach would deny trophy hunting as a management tool, and would therefore anger lobbyists and campaign contributors.

For example, Safari Club International is an organization dedicated to trophy hunting. In the November 1995 issue of their monthly publication, Safari Times, the trophy hunters revealed that Proposition 197 will allow sport hunting to resume: "the department can propose and the Fish and Game Commission can adopt regulations to allow the sport hunting of mountain lions." The article asks that supporters of the measure raise huge funds nationally for the California campaign, since they believe that the outcome of the election will have a far-reaching, nationwide impact for trophy hunting.

Back to California Mountain Lion Page.

California Wildlife Protection Coalition. Last updated 18 December 1995

http://www.sierraclub.org/chapters/ca/mountain-lion/info.html