Opinion: Mountain lions and alpacas can coexist. Just keep the alpacas in an enclosure at night.

To the editor: Let’s rethink Karen Dawn’s effective death sentence for P-45, the local mountain lion with a taste for alpaca. (“P-45 doesn’t deserve to die, and neither did the 10 alpacas he killed,” Opinion, Dec. 6)

Dawn said that “wildlife experts recommend keeping livestock ‘in some sort of enclosed barn or shed’” and lamented that such a practice would “condemn many thousands of innocent animals to lives of misery.”

There is no need for animals to live “lives of misery.” The Mountain Lion Foundation quite reasonably suggests that vulnerable prey animals be kept in covered enclosures — generally simple chain-link fence — only at night, when almost all mountain lion predation occurs. If I were an alpaca in mountain-lion country, I’d be fine roaming all day and then bedding down in a safe open-air enclosure at night.

Alpaca farming is a business. Mountain lions live here, have lived here since before man and will hopefully always live here. If this alpaca rancher needs financial help or labor to build a simple mountain-lion-proof enclosure for her alpacas, I’m first in line to volunteer both.

Dexter Ford, Manhattan Beach

..

To the editor: Dawn made no mention of the Anatolian Shepherd dog that lovingly guards herds of local livestock. Maybe she was not at a local meeting recently where this and many other helpful suggestions were made for living with the cougars rather than killing them.

I live on a 30-acre horse ranch in Malibu Canyon. We did have some sheep living freely a few years ago but lost them to a cougar (my fault for not taking better care). We have always made sure to have at least one large outside dog, and perhaps this is why my horses haven’t been bothered.

The cougars can roam their ancestral territory if we take the right precautions, such as having guard dogs and safe night-time enclosures. We need P-45 for his new genes, otherwise our mountain lions will become extinct through inbreeding and our mountains will lose a majestic spirit.

Suze Randall Knipe, Calabasas

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook