Ken Logan and Linda Sweanor, cougar biologists with a total of 51 years experience studying cougars, devised a strategy for managing them by dividing a state into different zones: Zone 1 for controlled killing in areas crowded with people or livestock, Zone 2 for sport hunting, and Zone 3 as cougar refuges. Like concentric circles. (See http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/cougars.html )
Many of the country’s cougar experts have recommended that wildlife agencies adopt such a zone management plan. That hasn’t happened, though, because the hunting and ranching lobbies rule the policy making. Obviously, they have failed. We need a new, smarter, “plan.”
Fatal attacks in the United States and Canada are rare – 21 in the past 115 years – but 11 have happened since 1990. So there is an issue. It’s just how to handle it.
We demand the death of a cougar for killing a sheep, yet let murderers, pedophiles, and other violent criminals live.
Even if there was a killing of a human by a cougar, it doesn’t compare with the human-on-human killing and violence we do.
We can’t claim the high ground.
Diane Daiute
Sweet Home