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.
"We were really conflicted," Stewart Loew said.
Wow! What a twisted mindset; children could be killed but we don't won't to hurt a dangerous wild animal.
Nice tagline!
Yep. A mountain lion wiped out a Javalina herd that used to come onto my brothers land in SE Arizona this past year.
Really nice Sharps! Do you shoot black powder cartridges?
Twisted is right, that decision is a no-brainer for sane folks.
I had a rule in Az when hiking. Kids will stay to the middle of the pack.
Under no circumstances will kids or those slight of build trail the line
Lowe is a Nimby "Not in My Back Yard"
That is one sweet Sharps rifle. I’m considering getting one of the reproductions in .45. ...and a new eyeglass prescription, of course. ;-)
Thanks for a very nice post. Both humorous and serious but the truth is more humorous than fiction in many cases.
What caliber? 50-110?
50-90
Yep
Ive read many stories about bicyclists and joggers getting attacked in Califorina by ML's. I don't believe Ive ever read even one story where they had a gun to defend themselves....seems silly to me.
I would love to have a sharps!
You’re welcome, and thanks for the thanks. I’m not a bear or cougar hunter, yet, and I haven’t had to shoot any them...yet. I’ve only seen one cougar (mountain lion) near sunset and two in the headlights, so far.
...saw quite a few bears, though, up close—a couple of them well over 400 pounds in the fall (brown-colored black bears—neighbor’s dog pecking at them provided the opportunity to judge their sizes). My concern for now is to be prepared to defend against any bad ones that show up. ...no really bad/hungry ones so far (~ 10 years), but their populations are increasing.
Numbers of incidents are increasing, too (news stories more frequent), but the wildlife folks here are refusing or neglecting to tally the numbers of attacks. ...haven’t found those numbers anywhere.
I’m against being wasteful or unnecessarily cruel to any animals, but that’s about it. People are more important, IMO.
I have never hunted bear or cougars either though I’ve hunted deer and elk for close to fifty years. In those years I’ve seen a few bears, never have seen a cougar in the wild but I know they’ve seen me because all the hunting I’ve done has been in prime cougar areas.
Strangely, where I was raised and lived over forty years in So CA in populated areas they are having cougars come into residential areas for easy meals of peoples pets. Many living there now think it’s wonderful that predator numbers are increasing, of course the people who’ve lost pets feel differently about it.
Like you say, incidents of man/predator encounters are increasing, I hope it doesn’t take losing another person for CA Fish and Game to start taking more lethal action in the areas this is occurring in. People are more important than animals!
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