Today: April 07, 2006 at 15:39:11 PDT

Plan to kill mountain lions at Lake Mead draws protests

ASSOCIATED PRESS

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Environmentalists are protesting plans to kill 10 or more mountain lions on the Arizona side of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, to prevent them from preying on desert bighorn sheep.

The plan calls for catching and killing individual mountain lions until a recent spate of sheep kills is reduced, said Jim deVos, research branch chief for the Arizona Game and Fish Department.

"Not every lion is killing sheep," said deVos, who said a start date had not been set for the program. "We're trying to focus on known kills and trying to remove that lion that is killing sheep."

Daniel Patterson, desert ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, Ariz., called the culling plan a mistake.

"Lions are scarce," Patterson said. "We don't need to be killing mountain lions to protect the bighorn. We don't need single-species management, we need ecosystem management."

DeVos said the number of sheep in the region has dropped in recent years, partly because drought has reduced the population of mule deer - a more common mountain lion prey.

At least seven bighorn have been killed by mountain lions this year in the Hoover Dam area on the Arizona side of the Colorado River and Lake Mead, where deVos said about 1,000 bighorn sheep remain.

The area sheep population serves as a source for the reintroduction of bighorn sheep throughout the Southwest, including Colorado, Utah and Texas, deVos said.

Frank Buono, a 33-year veteran of the National Park Service and a national board member of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said culling mountain lions should be a last resort after public discussion and an environmental assessment.

Buono, a former assistant superintendent at the park service's Mojave National Preserve in California, criticized the park service for letting Arizona develop the plan.

Roxanne Dey, park service spokeswoman at Lake Mead, said her agency cedes most authority over hunting and wildlife management in the area to Arizona and Nevada. Both states allow limited hunting of bighorn sheep.

The desert bighorn sheep is Nevada's state animal. More than 5,400 live in mountain ranges across the southern, central and western parts of the state.

"When Congress created the park, that was part of the legislation, that the park could not interfere with hunting," Dey said.

Buono and Patterson suggested that bighorn hunting was propelling the plan to kill mountain lions. DeVos disagreed.

"In the entire state of Arizona, we sell less than a hundred sheep permits," deVos said. "This is not a lucrative business. It's not about money. We lose money on the sheep management program."

DeVos noted a sheep and mountain lion management plan was created last year. He rejected arguments that the state and federal agencies should have a potentially lengthy series of public hearings on the culling plan.

"If we wait, what do we risk? Time is of the essence," he said. "We feel the loss of 50 (percent) to 60 percent of this sheep population is a critical issue."

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Information from: Las Vegas Sun, http://www.lasvegassun.com

One of the reasons the park service is F--kup is because a bunch of Envro. wakos have made it their home for the past 50 years.

The wakos would rather see a animal wiped out then kill a preator. preators are the holey grail to wakos.

They would rather see the whole area devoid of critters then let man get involved. They would rather let the lions kill off all the game then die of starvation then let them be managed.

When all the critters are reduced my killing each other and die of starvation they well all sit around the table and smile and say isn't mother nature just grand.

The park system should be opened up for hunting and all the animals managed in a controled maner.

It could be worse.

At least it's environmentalists from your own state piping up. State residents have a right to speak about managing animals in their own state.

In Alaska, we have Lower 48 greenies trying to tell us how to control/manage predators. The wildlife resources belong to the people of that state ONLY.

We get friggin folks from Kalifornia and New York telling us that they'll boycott traveling to our great state, bla bla bla.

My motto is: "the only good wolf, is a dead wolf."

Now kitties and bears, I kinda like.

quote:

We get friggin folks from Kalifornia and New York telling us that they'll boycott traveling to our great state, bla bla bla.

Why do you care...it's their loss.....

Yes, read this article in the morning rag. It would seem that indeed some species are once again about to be recognized as having more value than others. In this case I strongly concur...

The anti crowd goes after bans on predator hunting for a reason. If the predator population is out of whack, the prey species suffer and then the antis are more easily able to convince the public to ban hunting on other animals because they are increasingly scarce. They just capitalize on biological mismanagement, plain and simple.

Buono and Patterson.
I can only judge Buono by his words, and that leads me to believe he is the kind of flim flam jackass we have to deal with in our federal agencies. Patterson I know from experience with him in Arizona. He is a zealous anti hunter and a real fool. At one game and fish meeting in Tucson he got so carried away they had the Sheriff escort him to the door.

Vapodog:

Since you like insulting New Yorkers so much - exactly how many wolves have you ever seen? I never heard that there were very many wolves in Wisconsin these days. Do you even understand the problem of game management between wolves and desert big horn sheep - or are you posting from the University of Wisconsin which rules Wisconsin politics?

quote:

Originally posted by p dog shooter:
When all the critters are reduced my killing each other and die of starvation they well all sit around the table and smile and say isn't mother nature just grand.

No, they say that hunters killed them off like the envrio nazi's like to claim that "hunting"
nearly exterminated the buffalo, when infact the complete crashing of the Bison population
was an intentional act of the united states army
with the fixed intent of depriving the Native americans of the major source of their food
supply.

yes the hide hunters were grotesquely wasteful
in their practices, but the killing that brought the Bison to the edge of extinction
was an intentional act and the bison were
simply a means to an end.

Why should anyone believe that another such agenda driven course of events shouldn't happen?

Personally I think the envriro's and the Anti's are working in concert.
Their eventual goal? to reduce game populations
to the point where sport hunting becomes all but impossible, and then they have an excuse to take out hunting rifles?

Am I being paranoid?

Or

Am I being paranoid ENOUGH?

AllanD

The stupidity begins with publishing/announcing the plan... Why the hell would you do that? Just go out and do it and no-one will ever know. Like wolves they must be managed otherwise game numbers suffer.

Mtn Lions are not scarce by any means at all. That's total BS, they're plentiful in the southwest.