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Thursday, October 16, 2008
Majestic Cougars Get Protection They Deserve
By Wendy Keefover-Ring
WildEarth Guardians
Last week, after a dramatic hearing, the New Mexico Game Commission adopted historic reforms to protect cougars.
Biologists have demonstrated that cougars play an important role in our ecosystem — hence, it is in all our interests to preserve these majestic cats. The cougar population, however, requires special stewardship since this is a vulnerable species, contrary to a common stereotype. This misperception has led to decades of intolerance that has depleted them from most of their historic range.
Thus, it was imperative for the Game Commission to act, and we applaud their accomplishment.
The new regulations rely on a sound conservation principle: Protect breeding females and their dependent kittens — a goal that is accomplished by establishing limits on killing females and by instituting a voluntary online cougar-hunter education course. The course is already running in Colorado and has helped hunters distinguish male from female cats, keeping populations at a sustainable level.
The New Mexico Game Commission also ended a $1 million, government-subsidized program that promoted the snaring of cougars on the Guadalupe Mountains. This sweetheart deal benefited a private trapper since the mid-1980s, who has enjoyed a no-bid contract from the state to kill 20 cougars each year at the outrageous cost of more than $2,000 per cat. Adding insult to injury, the trapper was also allowed to keep the cougar pelts for private gain.
During the commission hearing, however, livestock growers disingenuously asserted that cougars had put them out of business—claims they made before the trapping program had ended. Furthermore, the trapping program was originally created to protect sheep, and federal land management records show that sheep production has declined by 71 percent in just a few years — because of the global economy, not because of cougars.
Livestock growers also rejected the idea of taking personal responsibility for proven non-lethal means for protecting stock (some as simple as using sheds while lambing). Ironically, they also complained that too many elk — sometimes cougars' prey — were stripping their hayfields.
While some may want a wildlife-free state, most New Mexicans appreciate both the nobility of the state's largest cat and the importance the cougar plays in our ecosystem.
Common sense tips for sharing land with our cougars can readily reduce unwanted encounters. These tips are readily found at www.wildearthguardians.org, and help create a place of coexistence.
Once again, we commend both the Game Commission and the agency for these steps forward. Cougars are not only a critical part of our natural heritage, they are important in the web of life, and the new policies will do a better job of recognizing that New Mexicans want cougars better protected.
Wendy Keefover-Ring is carnivore protection director for WildEarth Guardians. E-mail to wendy@wildearthguardians.org.
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