Posted on 08/08/2006 1:47:20 PM PDT by presidio9
Sport hunting of mountain lions in the American West does not reduce the number of attacks by the animals, also called cougars and pumas, against man and livestock, said a study released on Tuesday
"Sport hunting is nothing more than the random shooting of mountain lions for fun, it does not reduce attacks on people or livestock, as far as we can tell from any of the evidence," said Lynn Sadler, president of the Sacramento, California-based Mountain Lion Foundation which initiated the study.
"What we would like to see is that states manage them according to science, and not just some, you know, idea that you can somehow randomly shoot them for fun and cause anybody or anything to be any safer," she said in an interview.
About a dozen Western U.S. states have thousands of mountain lions living in the wild, Sadler said. All except California allow controlled hunting of lions, with some agencies citing the protection of man and livestock as a reason for the practice.
The new study by Christopher Papouchis compared the number of attacks in California with states allowing hunting, and said it took into account the human population and size of the mountain lion habitat. It is posted online at www.pumaconservation.org.
Many Western wildlife management experts say species such as bears, mountain lions and deer show more caution around humans if they are hunted and more aggressiveness if they are not.
"Hunting of lions is one way to regulate lion populations so you minimise those types of conflicts," said Larry Peterman, chief of field operations at the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks.
"We get occasional conflicts with livestock; we have very few conflicts with people," he said. "We certainly think it's an effective management tool."
But Papouchis' study disagreed. "If sport hunting actually reduced attacks, then states with sport hunting should have had relatively fewer attacks than California," Papouchis said in a statement. "That was not the case."
Reuters - news you can "trust"
Guess that means we aren't shooting enough of them.
He forgot to mention that capital punishment isn't a deterrent to murder either. I was surprised at the oversight.
Live Puma: able to kill a person.
Dead Puma: unable to kill a person.
California experienced a considerable increase in human attacky by pumas AFTER the state outlawed the hunting of pumas.
They also said that killing Hezbollah terrorist will increase the likelihood of future attacks on Israel.
Once you start "adjusting" for things, you can make the results go any way you want.
I spent a month at Washington State for a training session a few years back. Yep, some damn fine cougars there.
So when you kill some cougars, the others work longer hours to take up the slack?
I HAVE HAD A REVELATION!!! The only real way to decrease the number of mountain lion attacks here in Montana is to live-trap our surplus lions and send them to California, which, judging by the lower percentage of attacks, needs more! And if this works for mountain lions, maybe we should start exporting our excess grizzlies, which are extinct in California. Just think, not only would California have grizzlies again, the homeless problem would disappear!
I think what you have stated is cause for the start of a movement. Ship excess wildlife to California! The grizzly is on the state flag. They SHOULD have grizzlies.
" ...it does not reduce attacks on people or livestock, as far as we can tell from any of the evidence," said Lynn Sadler, who happened to be wearing a beautiful set of patent-leather blinders....
I have no ideas what you guys are talking about. It's known that by definition, a "cougar" is a middle-aged woman on the prowl.
We don't want to ship ALL of our excess wildlife, just the inedible ones.
There are pumas in the crevices.
The gist of this article seems to be, Hunting pumas in other states does not effect pumas in California.
Boy, that's an unbiased group. Hunting ANY predator makes it more wary of humans.
Our only hope is to negotiate a cease-bite.
Cougar, mountain lion, puma, woman on the prowl, pretty much all the same thing.
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