The Lion’s Share of Controversy : Prop. 117: The ballot initiative would prevent hunting mountain lions, and it incites emotions from both sides of the issue.

The hunter finds a track and sets his dogs on the scent. Sometimes, after an all-day run, they tree their prey.

“Then,” reads a two-year-old, full-page ad of the Mountain Lion Preservation Foundation, “from point-blank range, you fire away, blowing the animal to bloody lint.”

And that, allowing for the emotional language of those who don’t approve, is how mountain lions are hunted.

The method may not be pretty but, to those philosophically opposed to all hunting, any way of killing creatures by men is ugly.

Conversely, Walter E. (Howdy) Howard, Ph.D., professor emeritus of wildlife biology at UC Davis, suggests that the standard method of hunting lions--a sure, short-range, clean kill--is more humane than other forms of hunting and certainly more humane than what man is doing to mountain lions in his misguided attempts to protect them. Mountain lions, Howard says, are being loved to death.

“It’s not endangered, it’s not threatened,” he said. “It’s a bloody pest.”

Those views are further polarized by state Proposition 117, the Wildlife Protection Act of1990--the so-called “mountain lion initiative”--on the June 5 ballot.

Actually, the initiative is less about mountain lions than real estate. Prop. 117 presents no biological data on mountain lions but states that “corridors of natural habitat must be preserved to maintain the genetic integrity of California’s wildlife.”

Under Prop. 117, the state Fish and Game Code would be amended to prevent the hunting of mountain lions forevermore.

The initiative would create the Habitat Conservation Fund to spend $30 million a year for 30 years to buy and reserve wildlife habitat. One-third is earmarked for mountain lions and deer--a lion’s principal prey--and two-thirds would go to assist unspecified rare, threatened and endangered species, which do not include lions and deer.

In California, the mountain lion was a bounty animal as recently as 1963, then was designated a game mammal for regulated hunting until ’72 and subsequently a “specially protected mammal” during a hunting moratorium that expired in ’86.

Then the Fish and Game Commission again designated it a game mammal but lost proposed hunts to animal-rights groups in court in ’87 and ’88. Prop. 117 would restore the mountain lion’s status as “specially protected.”

Half of the annual $30 million would be spent in Southern California, the other half in northern California. Opponents point out that a female mountain lion needs 50 or 60 square miles of range, a male 100 or more--in whole parcels, not small chunks connected by corridors. They ask, where can anyone buy land like that, especially in Southern California, and then persuade lions to live there?

That’s why opponents claim Prop. 117 is nothing less than a pork-barrel piece for certain legislators and a land grab for private interests to acquire property in the Santa Monica Mountains and elsewhere. Prop. 117, opponents say, is riding the crest of environmental fever and using the mountain lion as an emotional focus to carry it to victory.

Wildlife biologists say the mountain lion needs no protection and, conservationists say, the $30 million will be stripped from more important existing programs.

Edna Maita, senior consultant for the Assembly Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife, suggested that Prop. 117 is a “shortcut” to achieve a de facto endangered listing for mountain lions, without establishing scientific support.

Even Gerald Meral, director of the Planning and Conservation League that sponsored the measure, says: “The mountain lion’s not an endangered species. It is not threatened by extinction from hunting. We would never argue that.”

But Meral listed $400,000 from the Endangered Species Tax Checkoff fund, along with proposed siphons from salmon, steelhead and the kangaroo rat programs, in a letter to Pete Bontadelli, director of the Department of Fish and Game, suggesting where the $30 million would come from.

“No existing environmental program would in any way be diminished by the passage of Proposition 117,” Meral wrote in a cover letter to reassure conservationists. “Director Pete Bontadelli has agreed that the funding analysis in this letter is accurate.”

But Bontadelli’s chief aide, Ted Thomas, said: “That doesn’t mean we’re agreeing there is no impact. We still don’t know what direction the thing would go.”

Maita said Prop. 117 “provides for a major reallocation of money for habitat acquisition. What happens to programs that are currently funded out of there? (For) the Department of Fish and Game . . . the potential is for (a loss of) $10-$12 million.”

The DFG already has instituted severe cutbacks to meet a $7.5-million budget deficit in the fiscal year ending July 1.

Prop. 117 began life as Assembly Bill 860, introduced a year ago by Richard Katz (D-Panorama City). Interviewed in his capitol office recently, he didn’t remember the number.

Questioning an aide, he referred to “the mountain lion bill.”

Katz said: “I thought I could get a bill passed that would ban the sport hunting of mountain lions. The amendments I was forced to take in the Water Committee rendered the bill so useless that I didn’t feel there was much left for what we were trying to accomplish.”

The bill sits moribund in the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.

“For all intents and purposes it’s dead,” Katz said. “When it became apparent I could not get a bill out of the assembly that would accomplish the goal, we dropped the bill and went to the initiative.”

That’s when the $30 million-a-year add-ons came in.

With a volunteer force blitzing shopping malls all over the state, the initiative secured almost 700,000 signatures, nearly double the 372,000 needed to qualify for the ballot.

It may have helped that the petitions bore a blown-up likeness of a mountain lion.

Meral, in his tiny, cluttered office near the capitol, smiled and said: “Suppose we had a picture of an eagle. Would you say that was misleading? We had to put something on there.

“We call it the wildlife initiative. The title is the Wildlife Protection Act. That’s exactly what it is. This is not set up to stop hunting. This is to stop hunting mountain lions. It’s a cruel and unfair and unsporting method of hunting. (The Planning and Conservation League is) a pro-hunting organization.”

Terry Mansfield, assistant wildlife division chief for the DFG, told of Meral’s comment, said: “Pro-hunters? Well, that’s an interesting twist. Whoa!

“This is a sensationalized, emotional issue. (At) the signature-gathering sessions, it was typically a table set up with a couple of individuals who have no technical background or knowledge . . . (and) they have a big picture of a domesticated lion, and they say, ‘Please sign here if you want to save the lions. They’re killing ‘em.’ ”

Early on, opponents were ready to throw in the towel. Since hunters make up only about 1.2% of the state’s population, they didn’t see much hope for support from non-hunters--and certainly not anti-hunters, such as those represented by the Mountain Lion Preservation Foundation.

Sharon Negri, the latter group’s executive director, said: “The majority of hunters are absolutely opposed to shooting a top-of-the-food-chain predator like the mountain lion. The California mountain lion may not be endangered, but we feel they are in danger. We’ve tripled in population. The lion needs a lot of space to survive. We don’t want to wait until it’s on the brink of extinction.”

Some of the groups backing Prop. 117 are opposed to hunting, but most hunters wouldn’t think mountain lions are worth the trouble. “Lions aren’t easy to hunt,” says Howard. “To hunt lions effectively, you need dogs. This makes human predation very humane. It’s pretty hard to miss. You nearly always get a clean kill of a lion in a tree. With deer and other animals, you don’t.”

Howard, who maintains a small but busy office in a basement at UC Davis, has written extensively and lectured internationally on the dangers of overprotecting species. Left to themselves, Howard says, lions become overpopulated and, when normal prey, such as deer, is exhausted, turn to domestic animals or to cannibalizing their young.

“Is that preferable to chase, tree and quick shot?” Howard asks.

The DFG estimates there are at least 5,100 mountain lions in California--the only area among 11 Western states and two Canadian provinces where they can’t be hunted.

The sides agree that the exact numbers don’t really matter.

Meral said: “We don’t know how many lions there are out there. But the point is that unless we do something to protect habitat, there

aren’t going to be any deer or mountain lions.”

Howard says that Meral and his allies miss the point: There are too many mountain lions.

“The best evidence that they’ve exceeded their habitat is the frequency with which lions are seen today in California,” he said. “These are secretive animals. We shouldn’t see them. Most hunters never see mountain lions. The last decade, they’ve been seeing them in their headlights and in broad daylight.”

There has been a large increase in mountain lion sightings in the Eastern Sierra this spring.

Meral said: “What it indicates to me is that there are now people in California where there weren’t people before, so they’re seeing a lot of mountain lions. Is that evidence that there are more mountain lions or more people?”

There may be other reasons, such as diminishing deer herds and the four-year drought, mountain lions leave their customary cover to kill sheep or domestic animals, but Howard believes that the signals are clear when a creature at the top of a food chain alters its behavior. “Evolution has demanded that they have a regulatory mortality factor,” Howard said. “That’s the balance of nature. Any species that doesn’t is in trouble. Look at human beings.”

Regulatory mortality factor? Translation: hunting.

And if hunting seems cruel, Howard added: “People are far more humane to their prey than any natural predators. People prey under regulations.”

A concern of the DFG and pro-hunting groups is that Prop. 117 would launch a sequence of hunting bans--today mountain lions, tomorrow deer, etc.--that would remove wildlife management from their hands.

Meral said: “We sent them a letter saying, ‘We hereby promise we’ll never do that,’ and so did all the other (pro-117) groups.”

Katz said the DFG, National Rifle Assn. and other pro-hunting groups are trying to make it a hunting issue.

“I’m not opposed to all hunting, (although) it’s not something I do,” he said. “It’s not a hunting issue. It’s a mountain lion issue.”

Either way, an observer might wonder if the numbers are worth all the concern.

From 1907 until ‘63, a bounty hunter could collect from $5 to $75 for a mountain lion pelt.

“We averaged 223 lions a year,” Mansfield said.

In the last two seasons that lions were legally hunted in California--’70-71 and ‘71-72--the DFG issued 4,953 permits; 118 lions were killed.

Seventy two were killed last year on 169 special depredation permits issued by the DFG when the lions intruded on man’s domain. That was up from 64 lions on 148 permits in ’88 and 47-114 in ‘87, and well up from the few in the early ‘70s when hunting was allowed.

Depredation permits would still be allowed under Prop. 117, but although most are handled by experts with trained dogs, the success rate is only a little better than 40%.

Hunters say hunting mountain lions is sport, but even that is not the primary concern most opponents have about Prop. 117.

Paul Beier, a University of California wildlife biologist who has been doing mountain lion research for the DFG in Orange County, said: “Our problem here is they’re paving the hills and they’re running out of space. The way we’ll wipe ‘em out is by fragmenting their habitat. They need room--not two or three square miles here and there.”

Richard A. (Dick) Weaver of Loomis, Calif., last year retired after 40 years as a wildlife biologist with the DFG. His career was devoted to research--most of it in the field--of the mountain lion and desert bighorn sheep.

Weaver heads the Californians for Fair Spending on Wildlife Protection committee to defeat Prop. 117. He minces no words.

“You never saw such a mass of ignorance as those people (who) don’t know--and don’t want to know,” Weaver said, speaking of proposition proponents. “It scares me because they have a very good chance of winning.

“Losing mountain lion hunting doesn’t make a hell of a lot of difference in how many mountain lions are going to be out there at any given time, the quotas would be so small. But what I worry about is losing an opportunity to hunt by referendum. Is that a first domino? Would we lose all the other things we cherish--quail hunting, duck hunting, deer hunting?

“I’ve always said that biology wouldn’t have a damn thing to do with the status of mountain lions. Emotion was going to rule.”

THE ATTEMPT TO PROTECT MOUNTAIN LIONS

Prop. 117, the California Wildlife Protection Act, proposes to create the Habitat Conservation Fund to spend $30 million a year for 30 years to acquire and reserve wildlife habitat and to ban the hunting of mountain lions.

WHERE THE MONEY WOULD COME FROM

(Estimated annual diversions)

1. Unallocated account, tobacco tax fund: $18,000,000.

2. Tahoe Conservancy tobacco tax funds: $500,000.

3. Natural Areas Office: $600,000 from environmental license plate fund (ELPF).

4. Salmon and steelhead program: $1,000,000 (ELPF).

5. Fish and wildlife improvement on federal lands: $100,000 (ELPF).

6. Kangaroo Rat Preserve: $500,000 (ELPF).

7. Dept. of Water Resources allocations from ELPF: Trinity River restoration, $750,000 minimum; Sacramento River riparian restoration, $750,000.

8. CCC stream restoration budget: $250,000.

9. Dept. of Fish and Game tobacco tax funds for stream restoration studies: $117,000; non-game fisheries, $300,000 minimum.

10. DFG tobacco tax funds for anadromous fisheries: $1,500,000.

11. Wildlife Conservation Board: $1,658,000.

12. Coastal conservancy fish and wildlife enhancement fund: $150,000.

13. Endangered species tax checkoff fund: $400,000.

SOURCE--California Wildlife Protection Committee (Project of Planning and Conservation League)

NOTE--A legislative analyst has determined that the Legislature could transfer $12 million or more from general fund, instead of existing environmental funds.

WHERE THE MONEY WOULD GO

(Designated annual expenditures)

1. $5,000,000 for 10 years to Santa Monica Mountains conservancy.

2. $4,500,000 to Dept. of Recreation and Parks.

3. $4,000,000 to state coastal conservancy.

4. $500,000 to California Tahoe conservancy.

5. Balance to Wildlife Conservation Board.

SOURCE--California Wildlife Protection Act of 1990 (proposed).