Stalking the Cats : Girl’s Mauling Adds Fuel to Raging Debate on Mountain Lion Hunt

In the wild, the mountain lion is a solitary and secretive creature, a loner that confounds scientists’ attempts to study it.

And in the halls of government, issues concerning the cats are sometimes just as tough to follow.

Caught in a swirl of conflicting advice, the state Fish and Game Commission is about to decide whether to extend a 14-year ban on hunting mountain lions or make fair game of an animal for whose hide the state at one time paid a bounty.

“Hardly anything evokes more emotion than this big, beautiful cat,” said Dick Weaver, a wildlife biologist with the Department of Fish and Game. “There’s hardly any middle ground at all. It’s a very polarized issue.”

The debate was made no calmer earlier this month when a mountain lion mauled a 5-year-old girl in a park near San Juan Capistrano in Orange County.

Although attacks by mountain lions--also known as cougars, pumas or panthers--on humans are rare, recent sightings of the big cats have been more common. Already this year, two mountain lions have been killed by cars on roads at Camp Pendleton, the Marine base in San Diego County.

And there have been several sightings this year in hillside areas of Orange County.

The Department of Fish and Game said mountain lion sightings are rare in Los Angeles County, and are generally confined to remote areas far from development, usually on the far side of the mountain ranges that ring the Los Angeles Basin.

Lee Fitzhugh, a researcher associated with the University of California, Davis, has been collecting data on mountain lions and their contact with humans for several years and said “close encounters” between cougars and humans increased from one in 1981 to 18 in 1985.

At a conference March 3 in San Diego, Fitzhugh suggested that it was only a matter of time before a lion attacked a human--probably a youngster.

“Most of the time the lion will not attack, but we would not want our children there when it does,” Fitzhugh wrote in his paper for the conference.

New Attention

The fate of 5-year-old Laura Michele Small, who suffered brain damage and other injuries when she was attacked by a cat in an Orange County park, has focused new attention on a political battle that has raged for months in Sacramento. The girl remains hospitalized in serious but stable condition.

But those on all sides of the issue agree that the rare mauling is not expected to play a major role in the debate or in the commission’s final decision.

Rather, the rights of California’s trophy hunters will be pitted in a traditional conflict against the views of animal lovers who have resisted every attempt to make the mountain lion--which has no natural enemies--the prey of man.

Also interested in the outcome are ranchers, concerned that an increasing cougar population poses a threat to their livestock, and some outspoken deer hunters who believe that the big cats, left uncontrolled, could endanger deer herds. Similar concerns have been voiced by the Society for the Conservation of Bighorn Sheep.

Against this backdrop, the Department of Fish and Game has called for at least another year of study before hunters are allowed to kill mountain lions for sport. Weaver said the extra time would enable the department to divide the state into six to eight regions and develop proposals to manage the number of cougars in each.

Hunt Recommended

But in an unusual move, the independent staff of the Fish and Game Commission has rejected the department’s advice and instead recommended that a 1,000-square-mile area in eastern Fresno County be opened to private hunters this year. Under that proposal, a total of 100 permits would be issued for two periods between November and January. Each hunter would be limited to one kill, and no more than 20 of the cats would be killed in all.

Harold Cribbs, the commission’s executive secretary, said he is satisfied that the hunt would have little effect on the statewide cougar population, which the department estimates at between 4,100 and 5,500. The 20 kills would represent about 30% of the population in the North Kings area of Fresno County, he said.

“Biologically, it’s something that can be justified,” he said.

The commission is scheduled to make a tentative decision on the mountain lions’ future April 7 at a meeting in San Diego. The final decision is due April 25.

Gerald Upholt, a lobbyist for the California Wildlife Federation, a pro-hunting group, said the commission’s proposal is long overdue.

“When man first came to California and planted the first crop and built the first home, he disrupted the habitat and the balance of nature,” Upholt said. The moratorium on shooting mountain lions, he said, “allowed one element of wildlife to grow totally out of balance with the other elements it has to be in harmony with.”

Sport Hunting Opposed

Richard Spotts, California representative for the Defenders of Wildlife, said his group will oppose any attempt to resume sport hunting of mountain lions.

“The (group’s) policy is that we oppose trophy hunting,” Spotts said. “It’s simply a question of whether people for fun can kill a lion. No one is starving or freezing to death in the cold for lack of a dead mountain lion.”

Bill Yeates, a lobbyist for the Mountain Lion Coalition, said he thinks it is foolish to hunt cougars simply to increase the number of deer so they can also be hunted.

“There comes a time in the wilderness where, because we have lions and bears and bobcats, that’s the reason it’s wild,” Yeates said. “That’s the value of these areas. If we have to sterilize those areas, I would suggest we lose an awful lot.”

Spotts and Yeates said it is crucial that sport hunting not be confused with the need to control mountain lions that kill commercial livestock. Such kills by cougars and other predators are known as depredation.

‘Minimal’ Impact

“The livestock people come from the standpoint that the lion is in that classic mold of all predators, like coyotes or bears or whatever,” Yeates said. “Their attitude is to get rid of the predator. My sense is if we want to preserve the mountain lion, we ought to get beyond the anecdotal and mythology and get down to what is the impact of lions on livestock. It’s minimal.”

But Leo Johnson, a lobbyist for the California Cattlemen’s Assn., said his group believes that a strictly controlled resumption of public cougar hunts might decrease livestock losses.

State figures show that the number of confirmed incidents in which mountain lions have killed livestock rose from 21 in 1973 to 139 last year. Ranchers who lose livestock to mountain lions may obtain permits from the state allowing them to track down and kill the offending animal.

Mountain lions were once abundant in almost every corner of North America but now are rarely seen east of the Mississippi. In California, they inhabit mountains and foothills from San Diego to the Oregon border.

Gray, brown, gold, tawny or russet, the mature cougar travels alone and is an accomplished hunter, rarely seen even by those who know of its presence. It stalks its prey much as a house cat does a mouse, silently following it at a distance until the moment is right for a rapid kill.

sh State Paid Bounties

For much of this century, mountain lions were considered pests in California, and the state paid bounties to hunters who brought in hides.

In 1969, the mountain lion was declared a game mammal and for two years was hunted under regulations established by the Fish and Game Commission. Then, amid environmentalists’ concern that the cougars’ numbers were dwindling, the Legislature enacted a moratorium that was extended several times before it expired Dec. 31.

The Legislature approved a bill extending the moratorium indefinitely, but it was vetoed by Gov. George Deukmejian, who said he was confident that the commission would “manage the mountain lion population in an intelligent and responsible manner.”

That task will be harder, a government biologists acknowledged, if the attack on Laura Small prompts a public backlash against the lions.

Still, Yeates of the Mountain Lion Coalition said the Orange County incident must be “put in perspective.”

“If more incidents like that occur, sure it’s going to have an impact, because it may suggest things may be different,” Yeates said. “But it strikes me that those (attacks) are extremely rare. I kind of think it’s a non sequitur when we deal with the bigger picture of how we manage the species.”