The slaying of Cecil the lion by an American dentist last year may have provoked widespread outrage in the US, but the slaughter of a cousin species of the famed lion is set to be quietly escalated in Wyoming.
The state legislature is mulling a bill that would allow the trapping of mountain lions, a species also known as cougars and pumas that sit in the Felidae family of cats that includes African lions, tigers and leopards.
The legislation will allow hunters, who can already shoot mountain lions in Wyoming for much of the year, to set snares and leg hold devices, including those with steel jaws, to entrap mountain lions.
Concerns over a decline in mule deer numbers in the expansive landscapes of Wyoming are behind the bill, according to its supporters. A vote is set to be taken this week.
“The incidence of predator kills on deer populations in certain parts of the state has to be evidence enough that their population is certainly increasing and at a rate that’s cause for concern,” said Hans Hunt, a Republican representative who has sponsored the bill.
Hunting interests carry clout in Wyoming, the state that spawned former vice-president Dick Cheney, who accidentally shot a friend in 2006 while hunting for quail in Texas. The state issues hunting permits for a variety of animals, including bison, elk, bighorn sheep and mountain goats.
But conservationists argue that the trapping of mountain lions goes too far. They contend the practice is not only cruel, it will imperil the future of mountain lions in the state while doing very little to bolster deer numbers.
“This would be a complete war on mountain lions,” said Dr Mark Elbroch, puma program scientist for Panthera, a global wild cat conservation organization. “There is no scientific basis for trapping. This is the opposite of science. If the mountain lion population crashes, we won’t know until it’s too late. Their populations will hemorrhage in some places.”
Mountain lions may well not be the culprits for the decline in mule deer. A long-term study in neighboring Idaho found that while the removal of mountain lions helped some female deer survive beyond winter, there was “no significant effect” on total deer numbers when lions are wiped out.
While advocates of trapping contend it provides another useful tool to control mountain lion numbers, the practice could lead to unwelcome consequences if allowed in Wyoming. Currently, hunters have to log every mountain lion they shoot to ensure they haven’t killed a mother or her kittens. This may not be the case with traps which, in any case, do not discriminate in terms of what they seize.
“You might get a wolverine, which is a federally protected species, or you might trap a grizzly bear cub which means you’ll really be in trouble because its mother will be near,” Elbroch said. “Introducing trapping is to introduce chaos into the system. It will really undermine the ability for the Wyoming game and fish department, which is underfunded and understaffed as it is, to regulate hunting and manage wildlife.”
There are no firm numbers for mountain lions in Wyoming but Elbroch said in a study area of 2,300 sq km south of Yellowstone national park, the species has been documented to have halved in number over the past eight years. Hunting and increased competition from wolves, which were reintroduced to Yellowstone in the 1990s, have been blamed for the decline.
Mountain lions are more than just graceful predators, they serve an important ecological role. About 30 species have been observed eating the carcasses they leave behind after kills. They help spread nutrients in the local ecosystem and keep the numbers of other species in check.
But they are being killed off at a dizzying rate across the US. Figures released by the Humane Society last week show that 29,000 have been killed by hunters over the past decade, mostly using a method involving dogs, which chase the lions until they climb trees to escape where they are shot.
More than 2,300 of those deaths were in Wyoming. It’s thought none of them were called Cecil.
