Posted on 07/05/2009 12:02:47 PM PDT by jazusamo
At first Stewart Loew was excited by the sight: a mountain lion on the family's farm near Amado.
In 40 years on the Agua Linda Farm, Loew said this was first large cat he had seen when it appeared in the donkey pen about a month ago.
But soon, his animals started to turn up mauled or dead. First there were four sheep. Then, on June 15, an awful sight: 16 pygmy and nubian goats — all the mammals in the farm's petting zoo — were killed. Only the geese were spared.
Loew and his wife, Laurel, who run the all-natural, community-supported farm, faced a tough choice: Try to kill the wild cat or put their animals and possibly their farm's visitors — including many children — at some risk.
"We were really conflicted," Stewart Loew said.
But when they thought about it, there was no choice. They had a garlic and onion festival coming up the next weekend at the farm, and people would be walking in the dark through areas where the mountain lion was making regular kills.
They called a family acquaintance who is a mountain lion hunter and got a "depredation permit" from Arizona Game and Fish — a permit to kill an animal that has been eating people's livestock.
When the hunter went out with his dogs, they didn't see it, but then Loew spotted the lion out of the corner of his eye. It was lounging in the farm's yard.
"We disturbed him and he slowly walked away from us," Stewart Loew said.
That's when the hunter friend took advantage of the opportunity to tree and kill the lion, an older male.
It's not so uncommon a phenomenon in Arizona. In 2008, 42 mountain lions were killed as a result of their eating — or "depredating" — livestock. That's in addition to 264 that were legally killed by hunters.
Since 1972, an average of 31 mountain lions per year have been killed as a result of depredation, according to Game and Fish statistics. The peak year was 2003, when 66 were killed.
A mountain lion expert who for years tracked the animals in Southern Arizona said it sounds like the mountain lion at Agua Linda Farm, about 30 miles south of Tucson, had grown used to humans — "habituated" is the term experts use.
"What we found from monitoring mountain lions is they pretty much stay away from people," said Paul Krausman, who left the University of Arizona in 2007 for a position at the University of Montana.
It's even relatively unusual for a mountain lion to come into a farm, despite the fact that they're in rural areas, Krausman said.
"This lion obviously went in there and had lunch, but that's not the norm. From a management standpoint, that lion should be dealt with," he said.
For mountain lions, growing habituated to people generally means death. That's because they can't easily be relocated. Males placed in another male's territory will come into violent conflict, Krausman said. And pretty much all of Arizona is mountain lion territory.
"I wish that he was just moving through, but he had just settled in here," Stewart Loew said.
Also, an animal that grows used to people will likely return to where people live, Krausman said. He cautioned that mountain lions occasionally kill people, especially children.
Krausman and a local mountain lion expert, Sergio Avila of the environmental advocacy group Sky Island Alliance, said several factors can cause mountain lions to start encroaching on human lands.
Among them: A younger mountain lion could have chased the older cat out of its home territory. That's the theory an Arizona Game and Fish warden endorsed when looking into the case, Loew said.
Or the mountain lion could have been injured and found easy access to food and water at the farm, which is near the Santa Cruz River. Or long-term drought may have slowly made the cat's territory unhabitable.
Many human factors could have contributed to the lion's settling in at the farm, too. Urbanization, even in semi-rural areas like the river valley of Santa Cruz County, drives some animals out of their habitat. It may also lead to the animals more easily growing used to humans.
People may also be affecting the mountain lions' prey by over-hunting deer in a given area, or by draining water sources.
The slaughter at the petting zoo was unusual behavior, but it does occasionally happen, Krausman and Avila said. It's called "surplus kill," and there are a variety of explanations for it, though it's unclear which one fits this situation.
Sometimes a mother will teach her young how to kill this way, said Avila, who wrote a master's thesis on mountain lion depredation of livestock in Baja California. Or juvenile mountain lions will kill for sport, he said.
There's also a theory, Krausman said, that a mountain lion will go into a kill with abundant energy, and if the kill is too easy, it will keep killing until its energy is used up.
Whatever the cause, the petting-zoo slaughter shook up the Loews, who have a 12-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl.
"My poor kids. These are their pets that they've raised, and they had to help bury them," Laurel Loew said.
They didn't want to kill the mountain lion, and now they're worried about restocking the little petting zoo before October, when kids arrive for pumpkin picking. They're also worried about a backlash from their environmentally conscious customers.
"For us, this story has no winners," Stewart Loew said.
It’s interesting how the thought of shooting the mountain lion doesn’t seem to occur as a viable option to these libs.
Mountain lion Ping!
Here kitty-kitty! ...buffet is open.
When I lived out there ECO types forced the reintroduction of the Mexican Grey Wolf.
Within 6 months the pack had been killed of for predation.
Sure they are pretty to look at but they are a problem to live with.
Yes, it wouldn’t be a tough choice for me if it was killing my animals.
Yeah, pens of trapped animals and his first thought seeing a mountain lion was, “Cool!”
They’re still working on the reintroduction of the Mexican Grey Wolf.
Mountain lion dead. *check*
Kids alive. *check*
Remaining livestock spared. *check*
I think I found the winner here.
gentle mother nature thinning out the weaker blood lines.
I notice that there was no suggestion of lion overpopulation as an explanation for the cat's behavior...
When ya gotta eat.....ya gotta eat....I guess the Lion wasn’t full of Hope and Change....
Figures.
The two Western states that Fish and Game never talk about the overpopulation of the mountain lion are CO and CA and of course the AR and enviro whack jobs in all states don’t talk about it.
[It’s interesting how the thought of shooting the mountain lion doesn’t seem to occur as a viable option to these libs.]
You don’t punish murderers. You make every attempt to “understand” them. Notice the justifications the story gives.
Here's a win/win idea: Create a pen for local mountain lions and let the eco-kooks in to pet them. Then let the hilarity ensue!
Thanks for the ping, Jaz!
That’s a beautiful Sharps. Is it original, restored or a reproduction?
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