Renegade Predators Must Be Controlled Hunt Or Be Hunted Cougar Population Is Becoming Dangerous.

Invite a wild cougar to an animal rights society lecture on the cruelty of hunting and it will volunteer to eat the vice president’s poodle for lunch.

Cougars are predators. Human sentiment and fairness are utterly foreign to their world. Cougars hide silently in the loveliest of settings and when they attack, they lunge seemingly out of nowhere, rip their victim’s throat and begin to eat before the victim has had a chance to die.

In 1996, animal rights activists convinced Washington’s voters to ban the use of hounds in hunting cougars. It wasn’t fair, they said. The mean hunters shoot those poor cougars, they said. Hunters tend to be rich, drunken trophy hunters, they said, heedless of the stereotypes and ignorance in such remarks. Voters, most of whom live in cities far from cougar country, wept with sympathy for the beautiful big kitties and took away the best tool wildlife managers have for keeping cougar populations at a level healthy for all concerned, including cougars.

Today, the cougar population is exploding. So is the number of cougar attacks on humans and family pets. With their numbers growing, cougars’ territory overlaps suburbia. There, hungry cougars find easy prey. Small children, for example. Cougars mangled two children during the past 12 months. In 1998, Washington received 927 complaints about human-cougar encounters, including pet killings. But the state’s supply of wildlife agents is so lacking, agents could catch only 31 of the problem cats.

Meanwhile, hunters in search of other prey shoot cougars if they happen upon them. But these do not tend to be the problem cougars; they are the ones that live on natural prey like deer.

If hound hunting is reauthorized - as it should be - then wildlife managers again would have adequate resources to kill cougars that threaten humans.

Hunters, who consider cougar meat delicious, have a high chance of success when allowed to use hounds, and they will kill problem cougars at no cost to taxpayers. Indeed, hunting fees pay wildlife agents’ salaries.

Wildlife can’t be managed by arbitrary, ill-considered initiatives. Managers need a full range of tools, including hounds.

Humans are the only significant predator in our region able to keep the cougar population within bounds. We humans should manage wildlife with brains, skill and flexibility, not with silly sentimentality.