Dowling on Mountain Lions

I suppose Katherine Dowling is entitled to her opinions (“Defying the Laws of Nature,” Commentary, Jan. 18), but she really should get her facts straight.

Revenues raised for mountain lions through hunting fees and licenses have always been minuscule compared to funding from other sources. For example, in 1987 and again in 1988, the California Department of Fish and Game proposed a hunting season on mountain lions. For $1, a hunter could buy a chance at having his or her name drawn from 190 permits. The 190 permits were then sold to the lottery winners for $50 each. The total amount raised amounted to less than $20,000. (Three separate court decisions blocked the hunts, responding to lawsuits by the Mountain Lion Foundation.) To conduct even a limited mountain lion study, by contrast, costs roughly $250,000 annually for radio telemetry, support vehicles and personnel.

Dowling further falsely claims that “mountain lions may be taken after an attack (on humans). . . .” In fact, the Department of Fish and Game, under the current law approved by voters in 1990 and quoted earlier by Dowling, can kill or remove any mountain lion that officials perceive poses an imminent threat to public health and safety, before even the possibility of an “attack.”

While there is good evidence of our human increase in population (which has grown by over 50% in California since mountain lions were first protected in 1971), there is very poor evidence that, in fact, mountain lions are increasing. Field research in Orange County, for example, established that the mountain lion population was not increasing, but in serious danger of extinction due to limited habitat.

Dowling then goes on to question the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park. The wolf, in fact, is the only large species of native mammal that is currently absent from the Yellowstone ecosystem, an ecosystem that has recurrent problems with overpopulating elk and bison herds. The goal of the National Park System, as established by Congress, is to restore ecosystems.

MARK J. PALMER, Executive Director

Mountain Lion Foundation, Sacramento

* Dowling writes, “Each species has a special place on our planet, and sometimes we do not realize just how important it is until we have ravaged it beyond replacement.” This is absolutely true, but Dowling’s article does not support this statement. Instead, she implies that mountain lions need to be exterminated when they get in the way of human development. Did it ever occur to Dowling that the mountain lion’s “special place on our planet” is where it now resides?

Dowling also bemoans the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone Park. According to Dowling, the purpose of bringing the wolf back to Yellowstone is to “re-create the old days when these beasts roamed free in the great Wild West.” Yes, all that time and money spent on wolf relocation just so “environmental elitists” can snap pictures of these blood-thirsty killers that “attack because of innate predatory instincts, not just to get food.” (I would sure like to see the study where that “fact” was found.) In reality, the wolves are being reintroduced to help better maintain the ecosystem that they once inhabited.

We must be careful of people like Dowling that quote the Bible before an article on ecosystem management. Soon they’ll be telling us that the dinosaurs went extinct because Noah’s ark was too full.

JAMES SECKINGTON

Fountain Valley