Lions Back on California’s ’88 Animal Kill Plan

The state Department of Fish and Game presented its animal hunting plan for 1988 on Friday, including a revival of last year’s proposal for a kill of up to 190 mountain lions that was blocked last year by animal defenders.

Advocates of the mountain lions protested the 1988 plan and argued that the San Francisco Superior Court decision that stopped last year’s lion hunt should be the final answer.

Lions were the big issue in the 1988 hunt plan, which received its first hearing before the California Fish and Game Commission. A second hearing will be held March 4 in San Diego and a third on April 8 in Long Beach.

The commission, which sets the state’s hunting policies, must make a final decision on this year’s hunting proposal within 20 days after the Long Beach hearing.

The 1988 hunting plan also includes a repeat of last year’s kill of nine bighorn sheep in the first legal hunt of bighorns since 1873.

Tule Elk Included

The fish and game agency also favors a hunt this year for 105 tule elk, an animal that has not been hunted legally in California since 1961 and was once believed to be extinct.

Surprisingly, there was no protest to the plan for a hunt of tule elk. Hundreds of thousands of the small elk roamed California’s Central Valley in the 19th Century. They were almost killed off by contract hunters supplying meat to mining camps. In 1875 only two animals protected by a rancher were known to have survived.

“I guess we didn’t protest because the Department of Fish and Game has done what it said it was going to do about the tule elk,” said Richard Spatz, lobbyist for Defenders of Wildlife

1972 Agreement Recalled

Spatz said that under legislation enacted in 1972, the state agency agreed that there would be no more tule elk hunts until the numbers of the animals in the state exceeded 2,000. Fish and game biologists say that figure was achieved last year.