The Killing of a Mountain Lion

With due respect to Glenn R. Stewart’s credentials as a zoologist, his solution for dealing with a cougar believed to have killed three dogs in the San Gabriel Mountain foothills--that the animal should have been trapped and relocated elsewhere in the wild--left me wondering, Where is this elsewhere ?

Many other zoologists would contend that the two most likely outcomes of such relocation would be, one, placing the cougar in habitat unsuited to its species, resulting in its starvation and death; or two, placing it in suitable habitat that, given the large numbers of cougars in the state today, would have put it in direct competition with another of the big cats, resulting in those two cougars eventually fighting each other over hunting territory, one or both of them possibly being killed.

It is obvious that Stewart’s solution is no solution for cougars, but solely for the benefit of humans who do not wish to face the hard and often ugly choices we are going to have to make about our limited wildlife and its even more limited habitat if we hope to maintain both. Out of sight, out of mind, as appealing as it may seem, is neither true wildlife advocacy nor true environmentalism.

THOMAS McINTYRE

Downey