Measure Would Protect Lions From 2 Threats: Developers and Hunters

Threatened by houses creeping into their domain, the long-term future of Orange County’s approximately three dozen mountain lions may rest with the fate of a statewide initiative that qualified for the ballot this week, environmentalists and other wildlife officials said Wednesday.

Supporters of the initiative--which would permanently ban sport hunting of the animals and create a fund to protect their habitats--turned in more than 600,000 signatures Tuesday in Sacramento, more than enough to put the measure on the June ballot.

In Orange County, the initiative comes at a time when rapid development is fast gobbling up huge chunks of what were once grazing lands for deer and stalking grounds for their predators. If development in the county continues unabated, the lions--also known as cougars--will soon be pushed back into the mountains, where many will die, environmentalists said.

“There are fewer and fewer habitat areas left, and the intent of this initiative is to pick off some of those jewels and save them,” said Bill Yeates, chairman of the steering committee of the Sacramento-based Wildlife Protection Committee, which is organizing the initiative campaign.

Some groups, such as the California Chamber of Commerce, oppose the measure, however, saying that it gives too much attention to mountain lions at the expense of other animals that are in more danger of extinction. Mountain lions are not endangered, and in fact, their population has grown markedly in the past decade.

Some environmentalists now even support hunting the animals and worry that the initiative has focused on lions because they are highly visible, despite the fact that other species are at much greater risk.

Included in the initiative is a proposed $30-million-a-year fund to acquire and protect habitat areas of mountain lions and other animals. The fund would run for 30 years, and officials predict that a portion of that money would flow to Orange County, where Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park and the area around it is one of Southern California’s most important cougar homes. The 7,600-acre park is just east of San Juan Capistrano.

“Caspers Park and especially Bell Canyon and San Juan Canyon are prime mountain lion habitats,” said Tim Miller, manager of Orange County’s regional parks.

For the most part, lions choose to avoid inhabited areas, but development in recent years has squeezed their habitats, putting the creatures into closer contact with people and their pets.

“As these houses are built, the lions continue to wander around those areas, and they bump into a poodle or a German shepherd. That causes some trouble,” said Reginald Barrett, a professor of wildlife management at UC Berkeley.

Although attacks are rare, they are not unheard of. In 1986, two mountain lion maulings at Caspers Park led officials to shut the wilderness area temporarily and commission a study on the animals in Orange County. The study has collared nine cougars, and seven currently are in the field, emitting signals so that trackers can chart their movements.

“The main threat to the lions is development,” said Paul Beier, project leader for the study. “If they plan to develop every last inch, there will be no more lions.”

In the meantime, lions across the state are faring well and, in fact, have staged a comeback in recent years, thanks mainly to a 1972 moratorium on hunting the animals, which expired in 1986. Their population has grown from less than 1,000 in the early 1970s to between 2,500 and 6,000 today, according to some estimates.

Locally, there were at least three litters of kittens born in Orange County this year, Beier said, though some of them have probably died. Beier does not believe a hunting ban is needed, although he said habitats need to be protected for the mountain lions to survive.

That is particularly true in areas such as Orange County, officials said, where development pressures are at their peak. If the initiative passes, Miller said money might be used to purchase corridors of land between parks so that cougars, which range widely, can preserve their hunting areas without wandering into communities in search of food.

“That, hopefully, would be what we could do with some of that money,” Miller said. “Once the study is complete, we’ll have a definite idea of where those corridors should be, and then maybe we can protect them.”