Mountain lions will soon be prey in the popular
federal Rattlesnake Recreation Area on the edge of Missoula, Mont.
In early December, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and
Parks and the U.S. Forest Service announced the end of a ban on
hunting the big cats in the lower Rattlesnake
area.
The announcement comes after a summer that
saw an attack on a child at a ski area just east of the Rattlesnake
– and 19 sightings of lions in the 5,700-acre portion of the
recreation area affected by the decision.
“Our
goal is to reduce encounters between people and lions,” says John
Firebaugh of the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and
Parks.
Joe Kipphut, a recreation coordinator with
the Forest Service, says traditional lion hunts in the region have
eliminated the built-in population control that takes place when
mature males are present. Because the “big toms,” as Kipphut calls
them, have had their numbers reduced by hunters, the more
troublesome juveniles have proliferated. The current plan for the
Rattlesnake calls for three to four adult female or sub-adult lions
to be killed.
Firebaugh says a similar plan was
proposed four years ago, but was aborted because of public outcry.
This year, he says, he hopes that the limited number of hunting
permits and the restriction of weapons to handguns or bows and
arrows should be enough to offset additional safety concerns in the
high-use recreation area.
“We hope this is going
to be more than a short-term solution,” says Firebaugh. “It’s a
problem that’s going to continue as long as we have people living
in areas where mountain lions also live, and as long as people are
building homes where lions used to live.”
*Dan
Oko
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Cougars too close for comfort.
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