Ethics In Management

Cougar management must reflect our ethical obligations to each other and to the other species with which we share the planet.

Tags:
Hunting, Ethics, Game Agency, Hunter Education, Female sub-quota

Successful cougar conservation, observers have noted, requires the creation of widespread and enduring public support for maintaining thriving and ecologically-effective populations of cougars across their range. Our decisions, of course, need to be supported by rigorous, interdisciplinary scientific inquiry. Yet we recognize that cougars mean different things to different people, and that cougar management needs to reflect the broad array of perspectives held towards this wide-ranging, majestic, elusive, and powerful predator. Decisions about cougar management should serve the common interests of the public, which is the goal of public policy in a democracy. We believe that common interest in cougar conservation includes our vision of thriving and ecologically-effective populations of cougars across their range and habitat adequate for sustaining them.

The Cougar Fund also believes that cougar management must reflect our ethical obligations to each other and to the other species with which we share the planet. Although we are not an anti-hunting organization, we do question the ethics of using dogs, radio-telemetry and motorized vehicles to hunt cougars. These activities can jeopardize the well-being of other wildlife species, which can for instance be stressed or even killed by hounds. The disturbance of ungulate species in their critical wintering areas can be a significant problem, as most cougar hunting occurs in winter when snows increase the ease of finding a track.

The Cougar Fund is also concerned about the killing of female cougars and the orphaning of kittens. In the field, females are often indistinguishable from male, and are often inadvertently killed by hunters seeking a trophy-sized male. The thrill of the chase, the difficulty in assessing the size of a treed cougar, and the presence of anxious, paying, and time-strapped hunting clients and outfitters are just a few of the factors that have resulted in an average female kill rate of 47% across the western states where cougars are legally killed for sport.

Cougars are also one of very few animals that can be legally hunted while they are raising dependent young. Female cougars spend three-quarter of their lives either pregnant or raising dependent young. Cougar kittens stay with their mothers anywhere from 18-24 months while learning proper prey identification and hunting skills. The killing of a female cougar often results in the orphaning of kittens, which usually starve to death or succumb to exposure. Few states track kitten mortality and more and game agencies are increasingly finding themselves in a position of needing to place orphaned kittens in a zoo or sanctuary setting. Because orphaned kittens usually lack adequate hunting skills or the ability to discern between wild prey and domestic animals, those that do survive often get in to trouble and are killed for preying on easy targets such as goats, sheep or pets.

The Cougar Fund recommends that state wildlife agencies adopt a strategy for hunting cougars that adequately protects females and kittens. Since females raising young rarely travel or hunt with spotted kittens at their side, the current prohibitions adopted by most states on the killing of cougars with spotted kittens at their side are inadequate. Furthermore, this policy fails to protect females with kittens over 3 months old, the age when spots begin to fade. Helping hunters identify the sex of cat is a simple and easy way to better protect cougar populations and avoid the orphaning and death of kittens.
More comprehensive and effective protections for females and kittens are needed.Few states track kitten mortality and more and more game agencies find themselves in a position of needing to place orphaned kittens in a zoo or sanctuary setting. Helping hunters identify the sex of cat is a simple and easy way to better protect cougar populations and avoid the orphaning and death of young cougars.