Cougar Plan Rejected

Wildlife management

California voters last week rejected a proposition to overturn a ban on the hunting of cougars.

The measure proposed to develop a long-term mountain lion management plan, to deal with public safety in areas where people have been threatened or killed, and to protect herds of threatened bighorn sheep and deer that are being wiped out in some areas by mountain lion attacks.

But it lost because the proposition also reopened the possibility for sport hunting, where teams of dogs with radio collars could tree the animal, and then the hunter would be allowed to shoot the animal out of the tree.

Even though the proposition won big in rural areas where the danger from mountain lions is a daily reality, it was trounced in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles where there is almost no danger.