Cougar hunting....

[Bigmack]

Excellent piece on why cougar hunting may be bad for both humans and cougars. I think this is yet another example of how humans try to fine-tune the environmental watch with a sledge hammer.
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Is cougar hunting breeding chaos?
By Sandi Doughton
Seattle Times science reporter

snip.....
.......... in northeastern Washington, where the state has stepped up hunting in response to soaring numbers of complaints about cougars, including two attacks on toddlers. A bill signed by Gov. Christine Gregoire last week could expand the cougar killing.
But startling results from studies question this traditional approach to cougar management.
Instead of reducing conflicts between cougars and humans, heavy hunting seems to make the problems worse, says Robert Wielgus, director of Washington State University's Large Carnivore Conservation Laboratory.
"It goes against the grain of what we've been doing for decades," Wielgus says.
Killing large numbers of cougars creates social chaos, Wielgus and his students found. Trophy hunters often target adult males, which act as a stabilizing force in cougar populations. The adults police large territories and kill or drive out young males. With the grown-ups gone, the "young hooligans" run wild, Wielgus says.
"Every time you kill a dominant male, about three of these young guys come for the funeral."
Evidence suggests cougars under two years of age, just learning to live on their own, account for the majority of run-ins with people and domestic animals. "You don't get to be an old cougar by doing stupid stuff like hanging out in backyards and eating cats," Wielgus says.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004285453_cougar16m.html

[Botany]

1. Thanx for the post

"You don't get to be an old cougar by doing stupid stuff like hanging out in backyards and eating cats," Wielgus says.

Great line ..... In the east where white tail deer are a problem the hunting of
"big bucks" just helps the population grow .... too many people pass on does
to get thier trophy buck.

But like cougars big bucks get that way by being smart ... I watched
a buck and his heard of does on a path that crossed into an open area
that was hunted ..... the buck let all the does go first ... I heard a shot and
all but one of the does came back into the woods and went the other
way .... the buck was like, "Oh gee lost another one."

****************

Why not hunt the problem cats? w/ dogs that is fairly easy to do.

[happyslug]

3. It has to be over 30 years ago, when I read a similar article

Basically it said that A cougar covers about 100 Sq Miles (Roughly 10 miles by 10 miles) as its "Territory" (I might be wrong as to the total mileage but it has been at least 30 years since I read the article). Anyway, if Cougars are hunted in the area, the number of cougars INCREASE, since no one cougar is able to control its territory for any length of time. In fact the article (Again from Memory) said you can almost double to triple the number of cougars in an overall area by the simple act of Hunting them (i.e. the way to increase the total number of cougars was to hunt them, for it freed up territories to young cougars).

[Muttocracy]

2. interesting - even truer in African lions

since they're more social and the whole pride goes through upheaval. I know a woman who did her PhD on that a few years back and I think she's in the Seattle area now - will pass it on to her. Thanks for the post.

[Xithras]

4. Yep. The problem is that we have some hunting baggage to eliminate.

In traditional hunting, you don't want to take the females or the young, because those will grow to be prize game in future years. That scrawny yearling will be a large buck with several hundred pounds of edible meat in another year or two, so you let him go. That doe will generate several more deer in her lifetime, so you let her go too.

This concept is good for sustaining populations of edible food, but breaks down when you're trying to thin predator populations to keep them out of urban areas. In that situation, you WANT to shoot the females who are located near human populations, because you DON'T WANT her to breed any more cougars. Similarly, as this article mentions, you don't want to let the young run around, because they're the ones causing damage. Older, mature cougars don't hunt people or pets. Only the young do that. When you strip an area of its mature males, you give it over to undisciplined youth and increase the chances of a cougar attack.

This isn't new news, but has been known to wildlife managers for decades. It doesn't get implemented because of hunting tradition, which teaches that taking females and young is wrong. In this case, that hunting tradition may be exacerbating the very problem it's trying to solve.

[losthills]

5. No one has a legitimate reason to shoot a Mt. Lion

unless it's killing livestock. There is no reason to "hunt" them. Let professionals take out the rare problem lion and the lions will take care of themselves. And our world will be a richer place...