Wildlife Enthusiasts Join to Save Rare Cougars
F O R T C O L L I N S, Colo., Jan. 2 -- Cougars, or mountain lions, once prowled across all 48 states in the continental United States. But their threat to livestock made them targets for ranchers and hunters.
Today, the big cats are extinct in the East and survive in only a dozen Western states. They may soon become endangered here, too, where it is legal to hunt the animals.
Rick Kahn, wildlife supervisor of Colorado's Division of Wildlife, says the number of mountain lions killed by hunters has doubled in the last 20 years.
While he admitted there was no way of knowing the exact number of cougars in Colorado, he estimated about 4,000 of the cats live in the Rocky Mountain range.
"I think we're harvesting in the range of 300 to 400 animals a year," he said. "We have a quota system and we try to manage our mountain lion population."
Population maintenance is important because as suburban sprawl encroaches upon the cougars' once expansive territory, the introduction of people to the wild animals can have fatal consequences.
According to a New York Times report, human attacks on people average about four a year. Since 1890, mountain lions have killed 17 people, 11 of them children, in the United States and Canada.
In Arizona, the cougars' purported role in the decline of a reintroduced bighorn sheep population prompted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to grant the Arizona Game and Fish Department permission to proceed with the killing of up to 36 cougars over the next three years.
In many Western states, the fear of livestock losses due to prowling mountain lions is a major concern. Ranchers fear financial shortfalls if mountain lions hunt in the areas where their livestock graze.
Goodall to the Rescue
Nevertheless, wildlife champion Jane Goodall, best known for her pioneering work with African chimpanzees, has just taken up the cougar conservation cause. She says it doesn't matter how many cougars are believed to be in the wild, they should all be protected as they are in California.
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