Saturday, February 06, 2010

Here are a few of the top stories on mountain lions from recent news articles. For more frequent updates, visit MountainLion.org and read the news daily.

Bill would OK 30-day permits to kill mountain lions in Nebraska

Nebraska Senator Louden claims to have seen half a dozen mountain lions on his property and is now introducing a bill that would make it easier for residents to kill lions. Although there has never been an attack on a person or domestic animal in Nebraska, and very little evidence that lions are even in the state, ranchers are claiming they have killed plenty over the years and simply chose not to report it. It has always been legal to kill mountain lions (or generally any wild animal) to protect people and pets. LB 747 is simply designed to label lions as "predators" and pave the way for a trophy hunting season.

Despite its urban setting, hundreds of miles from acknowledged mountain lion territory, Houston may now have lions living nearby. A woman out on an afternoon run alleges that she came across a mountain lion while jogging in the local park. Regional game officials were unable to substantiate her claim, but admitted that it was possible, especially if it was an escaped or abandoned pet.

If the encounter occurred, then the woman did just what she is supposed to do when encountering a lion -- she slowly backed away until she was joined by others a safe distance away. At that point the groups behavior -- standing around and watching the animal until it decided to leave the area -- became questionable, yet understandable, everyone dreams of seeing one of these magnificent creatures in the wild.

Editorial Note: While MLF agrees with a statement made in the accompanying news article by Texas Parks and Wildlife officials that mountain lion attacks in Texas are rare, there is also a statistic attributed to them which we believe might have been made in error -- "a fatal Texas mountain lion encounter happened,on average, once every 6 1/2 years from 1890 to 2001." If such were indeed the case, then that number would add up to17 deaths in Texas alone. At this time the have been only 18 confirmed human fatalities by mountain lions in the entire country.