Saving Wild Space

Your Sept. 9 story about two horseback riders confronting two mountain lions at Happy Camp Canyon Regional Park was wonderful. I can only imagine the combined feelings of exhilaration and fear the riders felt when the encounter occurred.

The closest I can come is an incident about 28 years ago in the Sespe backcountry when I spooked a lion while approaching a fishing hole only to find he hadn’t vacated the area but was just across the stream eyeballing me from over a big rock. At the time, that 25 feet from a mountain lion in the middle of nowhere did cause me concern. However, the privilege to have looked this wild being in the eye is one I would not trade. Since, I’ve seen bear, deer, cows and rattlesnakes (we leave them alone) in the Sespe watershed.

The question your story raised is: Should we, as Ventura County residents, preserve wild space?

The encroachment on wild places comes from development for urbanites--our homes, ranches, horses, golf courses and water resources, from oil development and range land for cattle. It also comes from our desire to kill off any wild thing that threatens us. Does any human animal have the right to call down the human authority to kill wild beings because their sheltered environment kept them ignorant of the biological diversity around them? Or because wild beings would inhibit them from making as much money as they can off the land?

The riders you wrote about were, for a moment, wild. They ventured into wild animal space. They, without knowing it, reacted with wild instincts they may never have known they had; instincts that were as natural to their forebears as driving skills are to them.

They lived, in a blink, outside the confines where most of us are imprisoned for most of our lives. We must ensure that for all of our children in Ventura County--where they too might have the privilege to one day look a mountain lion in the eye.

BOB STROH

Fillmore