California cougars: a conflict between man and beast

More than half of California is considered mountain lion territory, with some 5,000 of the big cats, also known as cougars, roaming free. Fast and powerful, they can leap 18 feet into a tree and take down a bull elk six times their weight.

They are solitary and elusive beasts. "Lions are among us constantly, and for the most part they stay out of trouble," said Marc Kenyon, who oversees mountain lion studies for the state Department of Fish and Game. "When people report to us they've seen a mountain lion and ask what they should do, I tell them they should consider themselves extremely lucky because seeing one is very rare."



Attacks on humans are extremely rare. But mountain lion attacks on pets and livestock are more common.

Since 2001, the UC Davis Wildlife Health Center has been tracking California cougars. "What we're looking at is: What decisions do they make time after time?"
said Winston Vickers, a veterinarian and researcher on the project. 

The study began as an effort to assess the impact of lions on endangered Peninsular bighorn sheep in the desert mountains of Riverside, San Diego and Imperial counties. Over the years, the study's scope has expanded. The movements of collared cougars have shed light on health and disease issues, genetic patterns and the behavior of cats in the so-called wildland-urban interface, the Southern California regions that are neither rural nor urban. It is country where man and nature coexist uneasily.


Of 53 mountain lions that have been trapped, tranquilized and collared, 19 have been killed by vehicles or shot, far more than have died from natural causes.

"The closer lions are to people, the more likely they're going to die," Vickers said. "Any interaction with humans, broadly speaking, will likely end up badly for the lion."



The extent of cougar attacks on domestic animals is difficult to determine. But one measure is the number of lions legally killed under depredation permits issued by state wildlife managers. In the year ending Sept. 30, 2009, 103 lions were killed by permit. Relocation is considered too risky.

Mountain lions have been killed for preying on livestock in California since the Spanish friars brought cattle to the missions. In 1907, the state Legislature approved a bounty for cougars.
But the bounty was abolished in 1963, and in 1990 voters approved Proposition 117, which outlawed sport hunting of mountain lions and designated them a "specially protected species."



But they're far from endangered. It's estimated that the mountain lion population has doubled in California since the 1970s. Yet given that an adult cougar's territory can range more than 100 miles, the continued fragmentation of their habitat concerns researchers, who say it's inevitable that human conflicts with mountain lions will increase.



Read Mike Anton's vivid account in the Times of the life and death of a young cougar that took a wrong turn when, searching for food, he slaughtered the livestock of a rancher in San Diego County's Japatul Valley.

-- Margot Roosevelt

Photo: Jaime Dyer, on the Dyers' San Diego County ranch, points to a photo of a young cougar who was lured into a cage by a government trapper after the animal attacked livestock.

Comments

[Tom Leckie]

Update your numbers and get the correct facts on these cats, the updated totals are close to 7,000 Mountian Lions, ( California DFG ) and the numbers will continue to climb. The behavior of these cats have changed and because of their increased numbers, now have ranges of 20 miles tops. I live in shaver lake and have seen cats in the campgrounds, walking on bike trails and even walking through town.I understand that these are beautiful Animals and MUST be able to roam free, "HOWEVER"! The fact is they have wiped out the black tail deer heards in this state! and because the heards are gone, soon they will wipe out the Fawn crops and then they will be seen more and more taking pets, livestock and attacking humans. These animals must be controlled before they start taking human lives...Each lion takes a deer every 1 to 2 months on average, thats 14,000 to 28,000 deer killed in " ONE MONTH "! State wide! Hunters are lucky to kill 2,000 in one year " Look at the facts and then maybe someone with a brain can see, when the food runs out these animals will have to hunt something and attacks will increase, let's do the right thing and " MANAGE " these Cats, for their sake and ours!

[Neil Alexander Walker]

I think it's great that we have these big cats in the state, though I'm not sure it makes sense to ban tax-paying citizens from legally obtaining hunting licenses to bag the cats while still allowing tax-funded government men to hunt and kill them when they are attacking livestock. It seems to me that the CA government could save (if not earn) money by letting citizens handle that job.

[Scorpius]

The Western Cougar (Mountain Lion) is drawn to livestock and pets only when golf courses, freeways, shopping malls and similar human activities have so altered their hunting environment that livestock and pets become survival targets. I lived in El Dorado County, and recall an instance where a lion killed and consumed a miniature horse from a ranch. The ranch was located deep inside lion country, and the State Wild Life officers tried to track the lion to kill it; there was a major movement among some local folk to instead entirely blame the ranchers for having invaded the territory of the lion. The lion was never found, and the issue subsided until a lion killed a woman jogger close to the previous attack on the ranch. The attack took place late in the evening, a time when lions are on the hunt for deer.This time the lion was found and shot. There was no indication that the two attacks involved the same individual lion, either.
Jogging along a desolate mountain trail is asking for a lion attack: a lion will chase and kill any thing that runs. A bicycle rider was attacked recently in San Diego County by a lion that stalked the rider for over a mile, as the rider had seen the lion earlier in the ride but had decided to out-run it. The lion left the injured rider where he fell, and was never located again.
It simply means that we do share our state with wild animals, and that it is really up to us to understand how best to co-exist safely with such creatures as Mountain Lions and Bears.
The age when these were all treated as "varmints" is long past, thankfully.
There is enough space legitimately assigned to human habitation in Southern California and expanding housing into semi-wild and remote areas is a risk that humans knowingly take, and should not result in wild creatures being penalized when there is a direct animal-human confrontation.