As Cougars Increase, Wardens May Decrease : Proposition 117: The requirement that the state spend $30 million a year for mountain lion habitat could siphon money away from other wildlife programs.

More mountain lions may roam Ventura County backcountry as a result of the new Wildlife Protection Act, but there may be fewer game wardens to protect them and other wildlife, state officials fear.

The act, passed as Proposition 117 on the June 5 ballot, specifically prohibits hunting mountain lions for sport and also requires that the state spend $30 million a year for 30 years to acquire habitat for lions and other wildlife.

But the new law may siphon money away from existing wildlife programs without replacing the funds, said Capt. Roger Reese, who heads a team of Department of Fish and Game wardens charged with protecting all of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties and two-thirds of Los Angeles County.

The department’s budget for wardens to enforce state environmental regulations could be cut by 25%, causing the layoff of up to 95 wardens statewide, according to a Fish and Game Department internal memo.

That could mean a cutback of up to five people from what Reese calls a skeleton crew of 23 wardens now assigned to his region.

“We already need more people here,” Reese said. Losing wardens or money for programs in the area “could mean the difference in the continuation of a species,” he said.

Reese said one species that could be most threatened by a cutback in wardens is the least Bell’s vireo, a bird which lives along stream beds. He said wardens regularly patrol stream beds and other habitat areas, looking for anyone destroying habitats and routinely filing charges against them with the district attorney’s office.

Two cases for destroying stream bed areas along the Santa Clara River are now pending with the district attorney’s office, Reese said. Without routine patrols, he said that such cases would go undetected and the already-endangered least Bell’s vireo could die out.

But Allan Lind, staff consultant to the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, said program and staff cuts can be avoided if a plan now being hashed out by his committee is successful.

“We can prevent that from happening by redirecting funds from Proposition 70,” Lind said, referring to a 1988 initiative. “It will save us from making more cuts to Fish and Game.”

The plan, which must be approved by both houses of the Legislature as well as Gov. Deukmejian, faces opposition from Proposition 117 author Gerald Meral, executive director of the Planning and Conservation League, a wildlife preservation group based in Sacramento.

Meral contends that Proposition 117 money should not come from bond money already set aside for wildlife habitat. Instead, it should come from sources such as the Environmental License Plate fund, which helps pay for Fish and Game programs.

“If Jerry Meral wants me to cut more biologists and wardens to protect the integrity of his Proposition 117, he’s got another thing coming,” Lind said. “It’s narrow-minded and selfish and greedy, and the Legislature won’t stand for it.”

Proposition 117, which became effective immediately after it passed June 5, declared the mountain lion to be a specially protected animal, although it is not considered an endangered species.

The proposition also places a permanent prohibition on sport hunting of the big cats, replacing a temporary moratorium that had been in effect more than 10 years, Fish and Game’s Capt. Reese said.

The new law requires the state to spend $30 million each year for 30 years to acquire and restore wildlife habitat, a third of which must be devoted specifically to mountain lions.

About $16 million of the money will come from the tobacco tax fund created by Proposition 99, money that is now earmarked for health programs, Lind said.

The other $14 million per year will come from existing environmental programs and future state bond issues.

Fish and Game officials, who already face a $12.5-million budget cut this year regardless of the outcome of Proposition 117, because revenues fell short of projected expenditures, fear their programs will become a prime target.

“Fiscal impact on the Department of Fish and Game could range up to $12 million in the first year,” department Director Pete Bontadelli said in a press release June 8. The figure represents about 10% of the department’s annual budget.

If an Assembly bill to provide $800 million for parks and wildlife sponsored by Assemblyman Jim Costa (D-Fresno) passes through the Legislature and is passed by voters in November, the funding problem for Proposition 117 could be solved, Lind said.

Proposition 117 also changes the way mountain lions that kill livestock may be trapped and caught, he said.

Mountain lions now number about 5,000 in the state, ranging over about 80,000 square miles of backcountry, said Tom Paulek, assistant wildlife biologist at the Long Beach office of Fish and Game.

The back countries of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties may support about 60 mountain lions.

A mountain lion tends to kill a deer about once every 10 days, hiding the carcass after its belly is full and returning to it to eat for the next few days, Paulek said. Other lions do not try to eat the kill of another cat, he said. But when a lion becomes too old or too sick to catch a wild animal, or if the deer population is not sufficient to support the lion population in the area, the cat looks to easier prey in cattle yards or pig farms.

“They have got to make a living,” Reese said. When a cat is caught killing livestock, a so-called depredation kill, Fish and Game issues a permit to hunt and kill the offending lion, Reese said. Up until now, traps were set with snares near the carcass to ensure that the right lion was caught, Reese said.

But Proposition 117 outlaws the practice of snaring and leg trapping, a ban proposition author Meral defends.

“Snaring is efficient, all right,” he said. “But a snare doesn’t know what it catches. Anything that strolls along and says, ‘Oh, here’s a dead cow, I think I’ll have lunch,’ like a fox or a pet dog, could be left hanging in the air in the hot sun and die.”