Misinformation Age Continues To Hold Its Own

Public misconceptions about hunting used to be irritating, but little more.

That changed in the 1980s, when animal rights groups started pumping big money into initiative campaigns.

Now some of those misconceptions have been translated into law.

This new era of wildlife management by mass misinformation is dangerous business for humans and critters alike.

In the past two years after ballot-box wildlife biology intervened in the management of Washington’s cougars:

The number of cougar-human incidents have doubled;

Rural residents are reportedly shooting the mountain lions in their back yards;

A young girl was seriously mauled by a cougar in the Sullivan Lake Campground.

Washington lawmakers have introduced bills that would overturn all or portions of the 1997 voter-approved initiative that banned the use of hounds for hunting cougars, as well as for bears.

Odds are against the legislation, as we’ve learned from similar attempts to overturn anti-hunting initiatives in Oregon.

But I can’t agree with a colleague who recently suggested “it’s pretty outrageous for those legislators to try overturning the will of the people.”

Initiatives aren’t always so much a measure of public will as they are a measure of public relations, which can dramatically sway a vote with an influx of cash and advertising.

The Fund For Animals and the Humane Society of the United States (not to be confused with local humane societies) have spent megabucks on political campaigns. This is the proven way to cash in on public emotion so anti-hunting leaders can continue to bank six-digit incomes.

Meanwhile, small animal-welfare groups, such as local humane societies, are left scraping for money to do the real work of helping needy animals.

When you think back to 1995, before the media advertising campaigns were launched, there was virtually no “public will” regarding hound hunting for cougars.

It was a non-issue.

You’d search for weeks to find anyone on a Spokane street who’d given the issue of hound hunting a thought, one way or the other.

Even those who were familiar with hound hunting through the classic story, “Where the Red Fern Grows,” simply had no opinion.

Propaganda campaigns artificially whipped up sentiment among urban voters who never bothered to ask a wildlife manager or a rural resident what the consequences might be if hound hunting were banned.

Cougars can still be hunted in Washington, but without hounds the effort is dramatically less effective.

When hounding was allowed, hunting was regulated by a strict area-by-area quota system. If cougar numbers were high, the quota was increased. If populations were low, the quota was dropped.

When cougars were posing a serious predation problem to elk or endangered caribou, wildlife managers could use hound hunting as a tool to give the prey species a break for a year or two.

If rural residents were worried about cougars prowling around their kids or livestock, they simply called a houndsman who would call a hunter with a permit.

A chase or two later, the problem usually was gone.

Hound hunters typically would target large adult male cougars. These adults are aggressive to young adult males, either killing them outright or forcing them to the outskirts of good cougar habitat.

The reduction in hound hunting on trophy cougars likely is a significant contributor to the proliferation of young cougars showing up in suburban areas and campgrounds.

The top factor, however, is the parade of people building their homes in suburban or rural settings.

Now that hound hunting is banned, a rural resident with a cougar problem must try to reach a state enforcement agent in a Fish and Wildlife Department that’s limping along because of vicious cuts in staff and budgets.

Under the old system, most cougars were shot by guided hunters who paid the houndsman for his services and likely would spend another $1,000 or so to have the trophy mounted by a taxidermist.

The economies in small rural towns benefited from regulated hound hunting.

Under ballot-box management, rural residents apparently are shooting, shoveling and keeping their mouths shut.

When wildlife officials are contacted, one of the few remaining hound hunters is called at taxpayer expense to track down the offending cougar.

In 1998, the Washington Fish and Wildlife Department documented 963 confirmed cougar incidents. Agents supervised the trapping of 62 cougars and dispatched 23.

Those cougars are just as dead as the cougars killed by hunters, but the taxpayers pay the bill.

In November, California voters approved a proposition that banned leg-hold traps. Last month, several Audubon Society Chapters filed suit to overturn the measure, noting that the ban will prevent fox trapping and have “unintended and irreversibly adverse effects” on certain endangered species, such as the clapper rail, least tern and snowy plover.

In some cases, trapping is the surest method of reducing muskrats when they overpopulate a wetland and destroy habitat for wading birds and waterfowl.

Wildlife management is complicated. Biologists are much better-equipped to deal with critter control than voters reacting to the latest TV ad.