Cougar Protection Effort Falls Short, Critics Maintain

In 1990, Californians voted to protect the mountain lion with a ban on hunting and the establishment of a state fund to buy territory for the lithe, graceful symbol of the state’s wilderness heritage.

Seven years later, the state has spent about $26 million across California to protect about 33 square miles for the predator--enough, according to figures in one recent study, to provide habitat for exactly 2.6 mountain lions, also called cougars.

The trouble is, the big cats have huge ranges--up to 100 square miles per animal. So 33 square miles does virtually nothing to relieve the habitat overcrowding that experts say is forcing the animals into suburban areas such as the San Fernando Valley, where at least five mountain lions attacked pets and frightened residents in more than a dozen incidents from Nov. 7 to this past Wednesday.

At a time when such encounters have renewed fears about the seemingly inevitable clash between humans and cougars as each species expands its turf, scientists are raising serious questions about what the mountain lion initiative has done for the animal’s habitat.

“I don’t think it has had any effect at all,” said Reginald Barrett, a UC Berkeley professor of wildlife and ecology management. “The amount of land being purchased is trivial.”

Moreover, less and less acreage is being added to protected lands each year, according to a Times review of state records. The proposition, officially named the 1990 California Wildlife Protection Act, earmarked $10 million annually for 30 years to set aside habitat for cougars and their primary prey, deer. The act also designated an additional $20 million a year to protect rare and endangered species and threatened habitats.

But, the review shows, the state fell far short of those goals for the $30-million fund in the mid-1990s. During the act’s first year, state agencies spent $6.8 million to buy or acquire easement rights to habitat for mountain lions and deer. During the 1995-96 fiscal year, the most recent for which figures are available, just $1.3 million was spent on new cougar habitat. Much of the rest of the fund went to enhancements to maintain existing resources.

That does not mean the act has been a failure, say scientists and conservationists. In the past seven years, more than 140,000 acres have been set aside for monarch butterflies, fragile wetlands and plenty of other species.

And conservationists say the mountain lion has benefited from the act, especially from the ban on hunting, which supplanted a state moratorium in place since 1972.

They also say that the figure of 33 square miles is misleading. Some money is used to create wildlife corridors to link large chunks of cougar territory, creating even bigger tracts. What is important is the location of the protected land, not the quantity, they say.

Although the money has been tight in recent years, supporters of the act say a program created by the Legislature this year promises to address the shortfall. That means more land saved for the cougar, as well as many other species.

“If you protect one part of the ecosystem, you protect all the other parts too,” said Lynn Sadler, head of the Mountain Lion Foundation, which helped initiate Proposition 117 seven years ago. “Our mission is to protect all California wildlife.”

The 33 square miles includes land purchased in the Santa Monica Mountains, Coal Canyon near Anaheim and Liberty Canyon near Agoura. The money is split between Northern and Southern California.

Much like the grizzly bear, California’s mountain lions have been surrounded through history by a curious mixture of fear and fascination. In many ways their story parallels that of the wolf in other regions of the country.

At one time, the stealthy hunters--also called pumas, panthers and catamounts--had a price on their heads as ranchers tried to get rid of what was considered a pest that preyed on livestock. But by the late 1960s, as the number of cougars dwindled, many Californians had come to see the animal as an emblem of the state’s vanishing wilderness.

A 1972 survey declared just 2,400 mountain lions left in the state, and the hunting moratorium was imposed to allow the population to recover. By 1987, with surveys showing more than 4,000 cougars, the state Fish and Game Commission proposed lifting the ban. Thus was born Proposition 117 to fight a return of mountain lion hunting.

No scientific evidence showed that the animal was actually in danger of extinction, and by 1989, state wildlife officials estimated the population at 6,000.

Still, voters approved the proposition, which imposed a difficult mandate that four-fifths of the Legislature must approve any measure to overturn the cougar’s designation as a protected species.

But that wasn’t all. It also required state officials to pool $30 million each year from various state agencies and programs. One-third of the fund was to go for protecting additional cougar and deer habitat and native oak land. The other two-thirds was to be spent on rare and endangered species and special habitats.

Critics called the measure deceptive, accusing environmentalists of exploiting the mountain lion as an emotional symbol to conceal what was really a land grab for their preservation agenda.

Proponents denied the charges, saying that saving habitat from encroaching development was a key issue, no matter what species was involved.

“The fund was intended to protect a variety of wildlife habitat,” said Corey Brown, attorney for the Trust for Public Land. “That’s what is important.”

Since the measure’s passage, various state agencies have either purchased property outright or bought easement rights to allow the land to be used for preservation purposes.

Initially, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy was one of the biggest benefactors, receiving $10 million annually until 1995. In the first year of the act, according to state records, the conservancy purchased 422 acres set aside for animals from mountain lions to the gray fox to the burrowing owl.

Elsewhere, the state spent millions on adding habitat to the protected total, especially in wetlands along the coast and in streams. Land was preserved for species ranging from wild geese to the monarch butterfly.

Although few deny the need for such preservation, critics say that is not what voters signed up for when they filled out petitions for the initiative that were adorned with pictures of the glamorous, tawny cat.

“The money is being used for things that might be good, but they have nothing to do with mountain lions,” said Barrett, the UC Berkeley scientist. “The public was told it was to be used to purchase mountain lion habitat--that was a ruse.”

Indeed, some wildlife experts who have looked at the effects of the measure now doubt that it did much of anything for mountain lion habitat. Lee Fitzhugh, a UC Davis wildlife specialist, conducted research that looked at the country’s densest concentration of cougars found in any scientific study--about eight per 100 square miles in the Sierra Nevada near Fresno.

Doing simple math, he divided that ratio of mountain lion density into the cougar habitat purchased or protected by the proposition’s funds and arrived at a figure of 1.8 of the animals in 1994. Adding land protected since then, the state by 1996 had raised the number of mountain lions protected to 2.6.

That’s not very many cougars for the money spent, Fitzhugh said. Plus, he believes that the proposition has put unnecessary restrictions on state land purchases, preventing state agencies from helping other species in need of protection.

“For $30 million a year for 30 years, there’s not much benefit,” Fitzhugh said.

But environmentalists say such calculations do not reveal the true picture. While hesitant to say how many additional mountain lions have been saved, they say the effect of the act is more complex.

Most important, the act put a premium on purchasing land to link habitats for cougars. In 1992, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy bought a scant 404 acres for $10 million in Liberty Canyon near Agoura Hills.

The land hooked up the Santa Monica Mountains to mountains and wilderness areas to the north, expanding the gene pool of the small band of lions thought to exist in the area.

“True, at the property values we’re talking about, it would take many more millions annually to--quote--save the mountain lion,” said Joseph Edmiston, head of the conservancy. “But we’re looking too literally at what the objectives were. . . . Unequivocally in Southern California, Proposition 117 stopped the hemorrhaging” of wildlife habitat loss.

But such protection has become rarer since the proposition. According to state documents summarizing land protected under the act, the total amount of new land set aside for cougars and deer has declined from a high of about 5,500 acres in 1992-1993 to 1,500 acres in 1995-1996, a drop of 73%.

The problem, according to state officials, is that much of the $30-million fund comes with strings attached--the result of tight budgets that had department heads scrambling to hoard money for their own programs.

The restrictions have the effect of requiring that the money be spent to meet the agendas of the agencies that contributed the pooled funds. For example, many agencies use the money to maintain programs for wetlands restoration or they may use it for “enhancements,” a term that could encompass many activities.

What ends up happening is that less new land is set aside each year.

Marilyn Cundiff is the wetlands program manager for the state Wildlife Conservation Board, which is supposed to receive $21 million of the annual $30-million allocation. But once the restrictions on the money are sorted out, the board sometimes gets as little as $1 million for its unrestricted use to acquire new habitat.

“It’s a laundering scheme,” Cundiff said. “From a budget perspective, it’s not illegal. It’s meeting the mandates of the law. Whether it’s meeting the intent is perhaps another issue.”

To Don Wallace, assistant secretary for administration and finance at the state Resources Agency, the decline in new land protection is a reflection of tough budget times. Voters never meant to tie the state’s hands in acquiring land at the expense of other programs, he said.

“What [the act] does is say [that] to the extent practical, money will be spent in this manner,” he said. “There’s always weasel room.”

But there is hope for mountain lion rooters. This year, Gov. Pete Wilson signed the Natural Resources Infrastructure Fund bill, which sets aside some of the state’s tideland oil royalties to protect wildlife habitat.

With a dedicated source of revenue for the fund, environmentalists now hope that the state will have enough money to fully satisfy the goals of Proposition 117 and perhaps have additional money to buy other habitat.

The new fund has paid for a $1-million purchase this year of mountain lion habitat in Coal Canyon in Orange County, considered vital to creating a new land corridor between Cleveland National Forest and Chino Hills State Park.

But in a reminder of how difficult it is to preserve land, environmentalists noted that the $1 million is only a sliver of the $10 million to $14 million needed to preserve the whole corridor.

“The habitat conservation fund has been very successful in protecting critical habitat,” said Brown, attorney for the Trust for Public Land. “The program would be even more successful if it was fully funded.”

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From the Mountains to the City

More than a dozen sighting of mountain lions were reported in the San Fernando Valley between Nov. 7 and this past Wednesday, in a band stretching along the mountains from Tarzana to Shadow Hills. Wildlife officials believe that at least five animals and as many as eight may account for the different sightings. The cougars have attacked and injured one small dog and killed a pet turkey. There have been no attacks on humans, although one mountain lion approached a woman as she got out of her car in West Hills. Experts aren’t sure what is causing the recent rash of sightings--the most in such a short period in memory--but say one factor may be a decline in habitat for the predators.

Domestic cat

Adult mountain lion

Domestic cat track: 1 inch

Mountain lion track: 4 inches

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Mountain Lion Spending

In 1990, voters passed the California Wildlife Protection Act, which banned mountain lion hunting and set aside up to $10 million a year for land to protect the animal and deer, its primary food source. Here’s how much the state actually spent and how much new land was devoted to protection during the past six years. Wildlife experts say a single male mountain lion can range over up to 64,000 acres.

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Fiscal Money Acres year spent acquired 1990-91 $6,801,000 3,015 1991-92 $4,449,000 1,924 1992-93 $5,725,000 5,454 1993-94 $4,132,000 4,547 1994-95 $3,654,000 4,848 1995-96 $1,323,000 1,507 TOTAL $26,084,000 21,295

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Sources: Los Angeles Animal Services; Wildlife Conservation Board; Peterson’s Field Guides.

Researched by T. CHRISTIAN MILLER / Los Angeles Times