AR-News: Managing Nature

[jim robertson]

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/07/05/EDG6A7G5H31.DTL

Managing Nature
The cougar problem is more manageable than we think

Charles F. McCullough
  Monday, July 5, 2004

The mountain lion attack on a woman hiking in Sequoia National Forest last 
week makes it clear that California wildlife policy must change: What we 
need, to solve the cougar problem, is predator managers (i.e., hunters or 
trappers) to achieve a balance between predator and natural prey -- not 
human prey.

Many environmentalists acknowledge that California is losing its mule deer. 
The fact is we are losing all deer, mule and blacktail, as well as bighorn 
sheep, kit foxes and wild turkeys. The reason for these losses is no 
predator management -- not people, as most biologists want you to believe, 
encroaching on habitat.

In the 1950s and 1960s, after many years of predator management and trapping 
for furs, these species were in abundance. Predator management and fur 
trapping gave us the largest deer herd (about 2 million) the state 
Department of Fish and Game has ever recorded and no encounters between 
humans and lions in 77 years.

There needs to be a complete change in the thinking and attitudes of the 
state's fish and game biologists. I spent three years in the late 1980s as a 
wildlife adviser for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in the Bakersfield 
District (involving 35 counties). I attended several meetings with state of 
California Department of Fish and Game personnel, as well as biologists, 
sportsmen and ranchers. The most vocally angry of the standing-room only 
meetings were in Mariposa, Los Banos and Fresno, where participants pleaded 
with the Department of Fish and Game officials to do something to control 
the predators, especially the mountain lion.

Their calls fell on deaf ears. Biologists said they believed the deer 
decline was due to a disease called "blue tongue." San Benito County 
sportsmen -- not state biologists -- collected 10 blood samples from San 
Benito County deer herds and proved "blue tongue" was not the reason for 
their decline, measured at more than 90 percent of the population within the 
county. As far as hunters and ranchers were concerned, predators were still 
the leading suspects.

California Fish and Game biologists still balk at naming the mountain lion 
as the biggest factor in the deer herd decline, despite their own ongoing 
study, started in 1993, called the "Round Valley study," and the 18-year 
northern Kings County deer herd study headed by biologist Don Neal. Both 
studies show the mountain lion as the major factor in the decline of the 
deer herd.

Yet, Californians -- prompted by the Mountain Lion Foundation and 
environmentalists who saw a financial windfall -- voted in 1990 in favor of 
Proposition 117. The so-called mountain-lion initiative earmarked $900 
million ($30 million annually for 30 years) to purchase and protect 
wildlands critical to cougar survival. The result: an increase in the 
mountain lion population from 2,000 in the 1970s to an estimated 4,000 to 
6,000 today, according to the California Department of Fish and Game. Bob 
Turner, a warden for 30 years with the department, has said it is unclear 
what the lion population numbers might be, but it is clear that California 
is saturated.

Another irony: Millions in federal tax dollars are now committed to 
maintaining the bighorn sheep population in the Sierra Nevada. Most of the 
money will be used to reduce and manage the mountain lion population. In 
effect, we are now taxed by the state to save the mountain lion and taxed by 
the federal government to kill it.

The mountain lion is a beautiful animal. But I believe the lion population 
should be controlled by science, not public emotion. What we need are 
biologists with common sense, who will understand the importance of 
achieving a balance between predator and prey.

Charles F. McCullough spent 25 years as a member of the San Benito County 
Fish and Game Commission.



Page B - 7
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




“The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long 
before the world runs out of oil.” - Sheikh Zaki Yamani, former Saudi 
Arabian oil minister