Groups Clash Over Lion Hunting Ban

Pro-hunting groups and defenders of mountain lions clashed Friday before a meeting in San Diego of the California Fish and Game Commission, which wound up delaying its decision on whether to allow sport-hunting of the big cats for the first time since 1972.

The commission, which rotates its meetings in cities across the state, listened to about 90 minutes of testimony--most of it opposed to the proposed hunting season--then voted unanimously and without discussion to put off the decision until its April 8 meeting in Long Beach.

Representatives of both sides in the dispute predicted afterward that the commission will vote, as it did a year ago, to allow a 79-day hunting season, during which as many as 190 mountain lions could be killed for sport in Northern and Central California. (If the ban is lifted, it would not affect Southern California.) Last year’s decision was overturned by a San Francisco Superior Court judge, who ruled that the commission had not sufficiently studied the long-term impacts of the hunting on the mountain lion population.

Banned for 13 Years

Sport-hunting of mountain lions was banned in California by the Legislature from 1972 until 1985, when Gov. George Deukmejian vetoed a bill that would have extended the moratorium. Deukmejian’s veto returned authority over the lions to the Fish and Game Commission.

Sharon Negri, executive director of the Mountain Lion Preservation Foundation, said the foundation will probably go to court again if the commission decides to allow a mountain lion hunt.

State biologists estimate there are about 5,100 mountain lions in California, but Negri contends that the state’s study of the lion population was too limited to determine their true number.

“Many of the problems we had last year are still the same,” Negri said. Among other issues, Negri said the commission had done no “meaningful analysis” of the impact last year’s wildfires had on the mountain lions’ habitat.

Alan Sakarias, representing the San Diego chapter of the Sierra Club, said the commission’s handling of the mountain lion issue last year was so flawed as to be “an embarrassment.”

“It seems as if you’re following that same path,” he told the five-member board.

Sakarias’ comments drew a sharp retort from Commission President Albert C. Taucher.

“What you’re saying is that our biologists don’t know what the hell they’re talking about,” Taucher told Sakarias. “I just happen to think our biologists are pretty sharp.”

But the harshest testimony came from several members of environmentalist groups that believe that hunting for sport is immoral and should be stopped by any means possible, including going into the field to interfere with the hunters.

Rufus Cohen, a representative of Earth First!, said the group is prepared to sabotage the hunt if the commission does not ban trophy hunting, treat mountain lions as a threatened species, shift the commission’s emphasis from hunting to habitat protection, and reduce or eliminate cattle grazing in the lion’s foothill habitat.

“We’re not just requesting this, we’re planning to implement this policy,” Cohen said.

Kent DeChambeau, a lobbyist for the California Rifle and Pistol Assn., an arm of the National Rifle Assn., said he expects the commission to approve the proposed hunting season in April. He said the burden should be on those opposed to the hunt to prove that the season would harm the mountain lion population.

“It’s up to the commission to decide: Does this kind of hunting endanger the species?” DeChambeau said. “If it doesn’t, then let them go ahead and use it. My philosophy is that the animals are here for the use of man unless that use is endangering the species.”