Should predators be killed to protect prey? That’s
the strategy in New Mexico, where the state’s Game Commission says
killing mountain lions is the best way to bolster dwindling
populations of desert bighorn sheep. To save the remaining 220
sheep, most of which have been reintroduced by the state’s Fish and
Game Department, the commission unanimously approved a plan to kill
up to 34 cats a year – 20 in the bootheel’s Peloncillo and Hatchet
mountains and 14 more in the Manzano and Ladron mountains south of
Albuquerque. State officials say of the 56 sheep deaths they’ve
documented over the past few years, the lions’ share was 43.
“It’s either we take action, or basically our
herds go extinct,” says state biologist Bill Dunn.
Though most biologists agree that cougar
populations can withstand a loss of 170 animals over five years,
critics charge that targeting predators misses the ecological mark.
“The game department should be looking at what
areas are going to be able to recover sheep and whether or not
livestock should be able to exist in those areas, not at cougar
control in the isolated populations where they have spent a lot of
money reintroducing sheep,” says Martin Heinrich of the New Mexico
Wilderness Alliance. “We simply need more and bigger bighorn
habitat.”
Heinrich says the plan to diminish the
lion population reflects a Game Commission that caters to hunting
and grazing interests. Bighorn hunters, for example, fund most of
the sheep reintroduction program through the auction of one desert
bighorn license. Bids on the license sometimes approach
$100,000.
* Ali
Macalady
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A bighorn dilemma.
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