 |
Management | |
| Distribution
& range
Author: Jason Pautz Site
created by Richard Phillips
|
With continued human encounters and lack of tolerance,
the future management of the mountain lion is questionable. The management of the mountain
lions has a long political history. For many years lions were persecuted to near
extinction in many areas. In California lions were bountied from 1907 to 1963, and state
records indicate that 12,461 lions were killed during that 57-year period (Torres et al.
1996:451). For six years after the 57 year bounty the lions were classified as nongame and
nonprotected by the state of California. After six years as a nongame mammal, the mountain
lion was again considered a game mammal form 1969-1972. The California Department of Fish
and Game prepared management plan for mountain lions and provided the first empirical
estimates of statewide mountain lion numbers (Torres et al. 1996:451). After many years of
failed hunting season proposals, the state of California passed a law protecting the
mountain lion as a, "specially protected mammal". Mountain lion hunting has not
occurred in California since 1972 (Torres et al. 1996). Because cougars are nocturnal, secretive and disperse at low densities, it is difficult to monitor changes in their populations (Beier and Cunningham 1996:541). Many techniques can be used to monitor the changes in cougar abundance such as track surveys, hunter harvests, depredation rates and radio telemetry. However, trend estimates from hunter kills and depredation rates are sensitive to hunting effort and reporting rates, respectively, and these parameters rarely are known (Beier and Cunningham 1996). Track surveying may be the best alternative to estimating cougar populations. Beier and Cunningham (1996) found that considerable sampling effort is required for track surveys to detect large population changes, we believe that track surveys are better than the alternatives. Track surveys can yield statistically valid inferences about population change, unlike indices on hunter harvests or depredation data (Beier and Cunningham 1996). Estimating the mountain lion population accurately is vital for the proper management of this mammal. |
|