Publisher’s Notebook: Cougar Confirmation

BY ANNE SOBLE

Although no other explanation seemed likely after the death late last year of one of the National Park Service-monitored mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains, there is now physical confirmation that a new big cat is in the area. It is impossible to say how long the cougar has been in the Santa Monicas, or perhaps, even to determine with certainty where it came from and what route it took to get here. Not only the NPS mountain lion study team, but wildlife proponents, and environmentalists in general, are heralding the news. The local cougar population has suffered serious setbacks: some attributable to the species, fighting over territory or food; others to human interface, including large-scale rodenticide use and traffic collisions. The Park Service intends to capture and collar the big cat. A few renegade guerrilla environmentalists would rather see the largest predator in the local ecosystem elude all captors, even the scientists, as it establishes local roots.

The new cat’s acknowledgement comes at a time when there are again rumblings in Sacramento that the sport hunting of mountain lions should be resumed. The hunting lobby, and what I think of as the fear lobby, try to utilize every adverse encounter with wild animals to campaign for painting bull’s-eyes on the critters’ backs. The mass media doesn’t help. A cougar is a “killer cougar,” as is a coyote or other predator that does its part in a balanced natural system. Even the word predator has been conscripted for the worst of human behavior, adding to the programmed fear and revulsion. The latest encounter to stir the legislative cronies of the big cat hunting crowd is the one last month in Northern California. But, somehow lost in the graphic accounts of a puma attack is the fact that a 65-year-old woman was able to fight off a hungry cat with a stick and a ballpoint pen. This is not to belittle any injury that occurred, but what she didn’t have—fear—was more important than what she used. As long as animals are demonized, humans will respond fearfully instead of taking the basic precautions to ensure their safety. That includes acknowledging and respecting wildlife and acting accordingly when in wildlands. Humans are not mountain lion prey. They don’t look like it, smell like it, and, if they keep their wits about them, won’t act like it. Those humans who want all wild animals eradicated so they never have to contemplate a possible adverse encounter have to get past their fear.