How many bighorn sheep does it take to feed a mountain lion?
Department officials say they want to remove as many as ten mountain lions from the area until predation on the sheep is reduced. "Not every lion is killing sheep," says Jim deVos, research branch chief for the department. "We're trying to focus on known kills and trying to remove that lion that is killing sheep."
That should be interesting. How does one tell if a mountain lion enjoys sheep or not? I mean, don't all mountain lions like sheep?
Over at the Center for Biological Diversity, desert ecologist Daniel Patterson says the department is making a mistake.
"Lions are scarce. We don't need to be killing lions to protect the bighorn. We don't need single-species management, we need ecosystem management."
Now there's an idea.
Officials for Public Employees for Environmental Ethics think the Arizona Game and Fish Department is jumping the gun. They want the agency to hold some public hearings so the public can weigh in on this issue. For instance, PEER wants to know whether the agency knows how many mountain lions live on the Arizona side of the NRA, and whether killing ten would wipe out the resident population?
Seems like a good question.
Beyond that, PEER says the Park Service, which manages Lake Mead, is abdicating its responsibility to the mountain lions by allowing Arizona game officials to implement their plan. However, a spokeswoman at Lake Mead says Arizona officials are within their rights to call for the mountain lion reduction, as designation of Lake Mead as an NRA extended that right to Arizona and Nevada officials.
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Comments
When fishing one late night at Kingman wash I spotted one of the Lions possibly a female as we also observed smaller tracks only that appeared to follow the bigger tracks along with big horn tracks she was within 100 feet of us at the beach WOW wished you could have been there.
just thought I would pass on the info, thank you for your time , Jim