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The Cougar Issue
by:
Heather Smith Thomas |
Predators have always been a problem
for livestock producers. In earlier years ranchers worked hard
to protect their animals by trying to eliminate the predators
that habitually preyed upon them. Historically, bounties were
placed on some of the most damaging large predators such as
cougars and wolves. With extensive efforts these predators were
greatly reduced in population but never completely eradicated.
In recent years, cougars in many states have been protected from
indiscriminant hunting and their numbers have grown again. In
the case of wolves, repopulation in the western states was
hastened dramatically by the introduction of more wolves from
Alaska.
Cougars, however, needed no such augmentation. Simple protection
has allowed their numbers to grow. The depredation problems with
cougars today varies greatly from region to region, and the
various western states have different types of management for
these animals, often working in cooperation with the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service.
Dave Williams, Oregon Division of the USFWS, says their program
is quite diverse and funding for predator control is shared
between the federal, state and county levels. “Cattle are the
number two agricultural commodity in Oregon and even though the
state funding has been shaky in recent years, the counties
continue to invest the majority of funds for us to be able to
have someone on the ground to work with the livestock
producers,” says Williams.
“With livestock being very important to local economies,
especially in eastern Oregon, most of the counties continue to
make the tough decision to fund our cooperative positions, with
the county supplying 55 percent or more of our budget. We also
have a number of counties on the western side of the state
participating in our program because there are some
livestock-producing areas there, and also because cougars
present a threat to human health and safety,” he explains.
In certain areas, cougars are the most important predators, not
only because their numbers are growing but also because they
have lost their fear of humans. “In the late 1960’s in Oregon
there were only about 200 cougars in the state and there was
still a bounty on them. Then they were afforded game protection
and the bounties ended,” says Williams. The state went to a
controlled harvest by sportsmen. Hunters could buy tags and fill
them until a certain annual quota was met.
The state developed management plans with the idea of trying to
build a more viable cougar population. By 1993-94 there were
3000 cougars in Oregon, and at that time a ballot initiative
eliminated hound hunting of bears and cougars. “Between then and
now, the cougar population has grown to nearly 6000 and we have
cougars that have expanded into residential areas,” says
Williams.
Wildlife Services have personnel in some counties who respond to
calls for assistance from ranchers when a cougar kills cattle or
sheep (or a guard dog or llama). That same person also responds
to calls from urban dwellers when a cougar comes onto their back
porch to grab a dog or leaves its footprints in the snow on
their skylight on top of their house—or stalks children waiting
for the schoolbus.
According to Wildlife Services, during fiscal year 2008, their
personnel responded to 257 different cougar complaints in
Oregon, with 28 percent involving threats to humans. In Douglas
County alone (where Roseburg is located), there were 40
responses to cougar complaints, according to Bill Wilbur,
chairman of the wildlife committee of the Oregon Cattlemen’s
Association. “From July 1, 2007 to February 2009, there were
1083 field visits to address cougar problems and damage,” says
Wilbur. “Of those, 41 percent involved cougars entering peoples
backyards without fear.”
Nevada rancher Pete Paris raises both cattle and sheep on
rangelands south of Elko. Most years, his biggest problems are
coyotes, but in May 2009 a female cougar and her 20-month-old
kitten moved into his area and started killing sheep. The two
cats killed more than 140 ewes and lambs—7 to 9 animals a night.
“When they get into a bunch of sheep, especially when they are
teaching their young to kill, they play cat and mouse with the
sheep and kill more than they can eat,” says Paris.
By the time the government lion hunter got there and was able to
catch up with the lions, 145 sheep were dead. “We got those
lions caught and the killing stopped, then a few days later
another lion came into one of my other herds and the trappers
are hunting that one right now,” he says.
“I’ve been here since 1982. In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s
my sheep operation was averaging from 8 to 12 mountain lions per
year that gave us problems. Now we’re down to 3 or 4 per year
but they are harder to catch. One of the biggest problems we
have now is that sport hunters play with these cats all winter
with their dogs. They only want to kill the biggest ones for
trophies. Hunters run them with dogs, tree them and release
them. The females and kittens are then harder to catch later in
the year,” he explains.
“The government hunters only have a short window of time in the
mornings to try to find the cats this time of year because the
days get too hot for the dogs to stay with the scent. After
they’ve been played with all winter, the mountain lions will run
as soon as they become aware of the dogs, and the dogs can’t cut
down the distance in order to push them up a tree. It becomes
more difficult to catch them. And before the hunter can get to
the tree, the cat will often jump down. If they jump out of the
tree toward the end of that best window of time, the dogs won’t
be able to push them up a tree again that day,” says Paris.
Sometimes the cats tear up the dogs when they come down out of
the tree.
Cougars are protected by game laws in Nevada and can’t be killed
by a rancher unless he buys a tag. “Once you have a documented
kill, however, the government trappers will go in and try to get
the offending cat. Sometimes it takes them several days,
however, to catch up with it—and the cat keeps killing livestock
during the nights. The hunter can only go after it in the early
morning hours and can’t do much after about 9 or 10 a.m.
depending on how dry it is. Once it gets hot and dry he has to
quit and wait until the next morning,” explains Paris.
“The hunter usually goes back to where he left off the day
before. But in the meantime the mountain lion may have gone back
to the sheep and made more kills. By the time the hunter is
notified and gets the location of the lion figured out, it may
be the next day and the cat is gone again. Catching these cats
is not as simple as people think.”
Cattle producers in Nevada have problems with cougars also, but
it’s harder to find those kills. “We have a herder with our
sheep every day. Ranchers don’t see their cattle every day.
Often there are some missing when they come in off the range and
you don’t know what happened to those. Those losses are usually
not as many animals as with sheep however. Our cattle run in the
mountains in the same areas as the sheep and we come in short a
few calves now and then,” says Paris.
Cougars kill their prey in a different way than coyotes. Cats
bite the victim on top of the head and neck, whereas a coyote
usually bites from the bottom—going for the throat. A cougar
usually slits the hide away from the part of the animal it wants
to eat, with the sliced hide skinned away as neatly as if it
were done with a sharp knife.
“We can almost always tell which predator killed the animal.
Coyotes like to eat the internal organs and the meat on the
hindquarters. The mountain lions love to eat off the brisket.
They prefer fatty meat. If they do open the animal up, they
always go for the heart, often going in through the neck and
brisket. A coyote usually eats the guts and liver. The lions
will also cut the head clear off a lamb, like a house cat will
do with a gopher. Lions often take off the head and front
quarter, slicing off the shoulder blade,” explains Paris. They
slice through the tissues as neatly as a surgical instrument,
whereas coyotes just rip and tear; if the victim is a sheep
there will be wool all over the place.
“The mountain lion will often drag the whole carcass to a nice
place to lie and eat it. I’ve seen them take a big lamb 100
yards into a thicket, to eat in the shade,” says Paris. They
will also do this with deer, or a big calf.
“We don’t get any compensation for the livestock we lose to
predators. Nevada hasn’t gotten to that point yet. If I were to
be compensated even 10 percent for all the animals I’ve lost, it
would be a very substantial check,” he says. Most years his
summer loss amongst his four bands of sheep—from docking until
shipping the lambs—is about 30 adult sheep and 500 to 600 lambs.
He blames about 10 percent of that loss on other causes and 90
percent on predators (coyotes and cougars).
The coyotes are still his most consistent predator. “A lion may
kill 150 head or more and then move on, but the coyotes are here
all the time. They’ll stay right here killing lambs until
someone kills the coyotes. We don’t know exactly how many lambs
are born until we dock them and count the tails. The 140 lambs
we lost in May from the cougar kills were not even docked yet,”
says Paris.
In Washington state cougars are also protected by game laws and
a rancher can’t kill one. It’s also hard to catch up with them.
Jack Field, Washington Cattle Association, says that even though
cougars kill livestock, it’s rare to see them or witness the
depredation. “You may find the carcass of the animal they
killed, if you are lucky. That’s the tough thing,” says Field.
“We work with USDA APHIS Wildlife Services for coyote control
but don’t have the same tools at our disposal for control of
cougars or bears. There is a hunting season for cougars, but
they can’t be taken unless you have a license and a tag. In 6
counties we have a pilot cougar program that allows hunters to
use hounds to pursue the cats. The state allots a certain number
of cougars that can be taken, and when they reach that quota on
toms or females, it changes to allow pursuit only. They can
still run them with dogs but can’t kill any more that year,”
explain Field. If a rancher has a problem with a cougar he must
then work with the state game agency.
“In Washington we’ve had an increasing number of cougar
incidents lately. I recommend that people immediately contact
their local game warden if they have a problem. We try to get
people in contact with Wildlife Services because they have a
list or access to individuals who have hounds. They could then
pursue the cat and get rid of it,” says Field. This is similar
to the situation in Idaho, where stockmen can be put in touch
with a hunter who has a permit and tag—who can go after the
cougar.
This must all be coordinated in a timely manner, however. “It
doesn’t work if the cougar attack is on a Friday evening and you
can’t get people in contact—and they end up out at the ranch on
Monday morning. By that time the trail has gone cold or the
cougar may have already killed another animal,” says Field.
In Colorado, cattlemen lose a lot of animals to predators but
these losses are not as well documented as in the sheep
industry. In 2007, for instance, there were 23,800 sheep lost in
Colorado, but there are no concrete figures for cattle. “Kills
by lions and bears can be compensated through the Division of
Wildlife, but these have to be verified—so those statistics are
artificially low to begin with,” says a spokesman for the
Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. Many producers don’t find the
carcass in time to verify the kill, especially when cattle are
out on summer range. Often the carcass is carried off or torn up
and scattered, or eaten completely.
Ranchers get to the point of frustration that they may not call
the wildlife officials, because not much happens even when they
do, says one Colorado producer. “Lions and bears are the main
problems in Colorado for cattlemen, and bears are more of a
nuisance animal. They cause a lot of problems in towns, and in a
few hot spots where they bother ranchers. Lions kill more cattle
than do bears. Our organization represents about 80 percent of
the range cattle in our state. Most of our members don’t say
much about predator problems. They just deal with it.”
Utah has a fair amount of cougar problems, according to Mike
Linnell (USFWS), though the incidence has decreased a bit during
the past 6 years because the state Division of Wildlife
Resources (DWR) increased cougar tag numbers for sportsmen.
“This reduced the lion population state-wide. Overall, the hound
hunters were too aggressive at first, so the DWR will probably
now allow the lion population to go back up to what it was prior
to 2005. I don’t know what those numbers will ultimately be, but
this will probably increase the depredation problems. There’s a
correlation between lion numbers and livestock kills,” says
Linnell.
“In Utah we manage predators through a wildlife damage
prevention board, chaired by the Commissioner of Agriculture.
The vice-chairman is the Director of Wildlife Resources. This
board makes the policy we use in managing our predator program.
The way it’s set up, we respond after a calf is killed. We go
out and confirm the kill and then we can remove the offending
lion or bear. We have to make sure it was an actual lion or bear
kill,” he says.
Cougars are unpredictable, compared with coyotes, and kills may
be more sporadic—as cougars travel through a region. A female
with kittens may hang around a certain place longer and cause a
lot of problems while feeding her kittens or teaching them to
hunt. Some of the major problems are caused by big males,
however.
Linnell went through the DWR data for the past dozen years,
looking at the lion statistics. “We are usually very good at
getting the offending animal, because we start at the kill and
either trap them there when they return to the carcass, or track
them from there with dogs. It’s been almost a 50-50 split
between females and big males, on average, though some years
it’s been more females. We were trying to figure out if the
females were deliberately targeting livestock to feed their
young, but now we think it’s simply a fact that if any cougar
comes across a calf they may kill it, and they are moving around
a lot,” he says. There’s not much a rancher can do to prevent
cougar kills.
“This is why our board adopted the policy that if there’s an
individual cat that’s killing livestock, behaviorally that cat
will continue to do so. That’s been well established. So we try
to take out that particular individual. That’s why we are not
just going out and trying to remove all of them,” says Linnell.
Ranchers in Utah generally work closely with the state and
federal agencies to control the problem predators. “State law
permits the rancher, if he sees a bear or lion chasing or
attacking livestock, to shoot it. If the rancher shoots it, he
has 72 hours to notify the game department or the DWR. If he
does so, he can buy a tag if he wants to keep the hide. This
allows the rancher to legally handle the carcass. But in order
to shoot it legally, you must be a member of the ranch family or
an employee. You can’t just hire someone expressly for the
purpose of shooting the predator. If ranchers or their employees
are out with the livestock and come across a cougar or bear
harassing the stock, they can shoot it. There are not many taken
that way, however. All too often the rancher comes upon the kill
after the fact, so he generally has to contact the government
trapper,” says Linnell.
There is a compensation program in Utah but the challenge is
confirming the cause of the kill, especially in instances where
the carcass is not found, or found too late to determine the
cause of death. “Lions often cache the carcass and it’s harder
to find. We don’t get many cow kills by lions, but we do get a
lot of calf kills. When calves are just 200-300 pounds the lions
can drag them quite a ways,” explains Linnell.
In California, mountain lions are completely protected (with no
hunting season). Bruce Hafenfeld (past president of the
California Cattlemens Association) ranches near Weldon,
California and though most of his predator losses are due to
coyotes, he generally loses some calves each year to mountain
lions. In order to shoot a lion that is killing cattle, a
rancher must have a depredation permit. A new rule went into
effect a few years ago. “Now we no longer have to initially call
the Fish and Game to come out and verify the kill and issue a
depredation permit; we can actually call Wildlife Services
direct and their response is generally quicker. They do the
verification process for the Fish and Game, and that helps a
lot. You must have proof of damage before you can get the
depredation permit,” says Hafenfeld.
Mountain lions are also becoming a bigger problem in urban
situations in the foothills. “In California our lion population
is doing very well with protection, and the lions have really
hammered the deer herds in many areas,” he says.
Deprecation losses from the various predators amount to millions
of dollars in the state, and the control tools available are
becoming more limited. “We have to become more self reliant in
protecting our livestock, but we also have to be very careful to
not violate any rules. In Condor areas, for instance, you can
only use copper bullets if you are shooting coyotes or going
after a depredating lion, for instance, and those are very
expensive,” says Hafenfeld.
Craig Coolahan, Wildlife Services, says that his agency
personnel are available in many cases to assist livestock
producers with lion problems. NASS surveys show that in the year
2000, the losses in California to mountain lions and bobcats
amounted to 900 adult cattle and 2400 calves. Figures for 2005
listed 1000 adult cattle and 1300 calves. Those figures are
probably a little more accurate than the losses documented by
Wildlife Services. “The latter are just the losses that our
personnel actually see or are reported to them, so it’s just a
small percentage of the damage that is actually occurring,” he
says.
Ever since 1990, mountain lions in California have had a special
status as a “specially protected mammal”. They are not a game
animal; they are fully protected. “If a rancher has a problem
with a lion, he or his employee may request a permit from the
department to take that lion, if a kill has been documented,”
says Coolihan, but it’s not legal to shoot one just because it’s
on your property.
“The taking of an animal caught in the act of killing must be
reported within 72 hours. There’s also a requirement in our law
that says these animals must be necropsied by the department,”
he says. When that law was passed to protect mountain lions, the
intent was to make sure that the animal had actually been eating
livestock, and also to find out if it was sick or had a problem
that might have caused it to attack livestock.
With full protection, many people feel that the lions have lost
their fear of people now that they are no longer hunted. The
increase in lion population has also resulted in more
depredation on livestock during the past 20 years. In many
instances the rancher is unable to eliminate a lion that is
killing stock because it’s not easy to be in the right place at
the right time to see the lion. Most livestock owners don’t have
hounds and would not be able to track and pursue the cat. They
usually need help from Wildlife Services to eliminate the
offending animal.
“We catch a fair number of lions with cage traps. Mountain lions
tend to return to the kill,” says Coolahan. “We place the fresh
kill in a cage trap and get the lion that way. Most people in
California who have problems with lions are using our personnel,
or a houndsman they might know, who is allowed to do that type
of work. It’s still legal to pursue bobcats with dogs, for
instance.”
In California the Wildlife Service has an agreement with the
Department of Fish and Game. “They provide some funding for us
to assist with mountain lion depredation problems anywhere in
the state, to capture one,” says Coolahan. In California there
are no compensation programs for livestock losses due to lions.
In Wyoming there are certain areas of the state where cougars
can be harvested, according to Kent Drake (Predator Management
Coordinator, Wyoming Department of Agriculture). “You can apply
for a license from the Game and Fish department, but there is a
certain quota they’ll allow, and once it is filled, the hunting
season is over,” he says.
If a rancher has a problem cat, he cannot get help from the
government trapper because in Wyoming the cougar is not
considered a predator. “It is considered a trophy game animal,
and it is up to the Game and Fish to manage these animals,” says
Drake.
Thus the problems, and the help available to deal with them,
will vary from state to state, and ranchers need to find out
what their best options are for handling cougar depredation. |
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