[Megan]

3. Shoot on site:

This would take care of the dangerous animals which have habituated to humans, but it is a political minefield.

First of all, there are always more cougars where the habituated ones came from, so it is a stopgap measure at best, but probably a necessary one, IMO.

Secondly, the political minefield part:

San Francisco Chronicle

PALO ALTO
Upset residents mourn cougar shot by officer
Tranquilizing was too risky, police say

Alan Gathright, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Faced with a storm of protest from animal lovers over the "needless murdering" of a mountain lion shot by officers after it strayed into a Palo Alto neighborhood, police stood by their decision that an attempt to tranquilize the 99-pound cat could have endangered the community. [...]

With hundreds of children about to be released from nearby schools in the densely populated neighborhood, Fischer said, "We couldn't take the chance of shooting the animal with a tranquilizer gun and then having it run for another 30 minutes. ... While we were concerned about the animal, the human safety did take precedence.'' [...]

"I am outraged at the PA police for their needless murdering of such a beautiful creature,'' a San Francisco resident e-mailed The Chronicle. "It easily could have been removed from the premises and relocated. Those dirty blood-thirsty bastards should be ashamed. ... A treed Mountain Lion! Asleep yet!! They should hang their heads in shame."

PALO ALTO / Upset residents mourn cougar shot by officer / Tranquilizing was too risky, police say

In addition, people are making decisions and voting against their own best interests, and those of their children, it seems to me. Consider the banning of hound hunting in Oregon and Washington, and the subsequent rise in cougar-human conflict.

Also, and inexplicably to me as a mother, two of the most horrifying, hair-raising stories I can come up with involving children feature mothers who did not want the animals shot. Any domestic dog that behaved this aggressively would be put down:

Stalking lion puts fear into family
Evergreen predator makes off with pet, shows interest in son
By Kirk Mitchell
Denver Post Staff Writer
05/31/2006

"We're scared out of our minds," Carrie Warner said. "There is something very strange about the way this lion is hunting us. I'm at the end of my rope." [...]

A week after the first encounter, Carrie and Shaffer were smoking outside when they heard the lion screech.

Carrie made it inside the front door first. The lion crossed a 60-foot dirt road in a few seconds. Carrie Warner slammed the door just as her husband got through. The lion's head was caught in the door. She slammed the door on its head again and it backed out.

The Warners don't want the animal killed. Shaffer Warner said he wishes the animal to be tranquilized and relocated.

DenverPost.com - Stalking lion puts fear into family

Mother and three children fend off mountain lion attack

HOUSTON (June 8, 1998 9:20 p.m. EDT http://www.nando.net) - Armed only with a pocket knife and a mother's powerful instincts, Mary Jane Coder fought off a mountain lion that tried repeatedly to attack her young daughters on a remote Texas trail.

The family survived, but just barely. [...]

The attack took place on May 25 in Big Bend National Park in west Texas while Coder paused to take photographs of her three daughters -- Jessica, 9, Dallas, 8, and Meagan, 6 -- during a hike in the Chisos Mountains.

Coder had Dallas in the viewfinder when she noticed that the girl, sitting on a boulder, was not smiling.

"She started screaming "Mommy, Mommy, get me down from here.' I turned around and there was a big mountain lion getting ready to pounce," Coder said.

Coder, who lives in the south Texas town of Harlingen, quickly pulled the girls behind her and told them to get a pocket knife out of a backpack. In the meantime, she threw a rock at the lion to try to scare it away, but the big, tan cat's only response was an angry hiss.

She shouted at the lion and waved the knife, but the animal * began running at the girls one by one, "trying to cut them (out of a herd) like they were baby deer."

"My kids started scattering, which was the worst thing to do. It would go toward one of them and I would run toward it and it would veer away," Coder said. "I was shouting at them to come to me and shouting at the cat to go away. It was running back and forth after them. It was chaos."

At one point, Coder was so close to the mountain lion that it reached out and whacked her hand, puncturing it with a claw. "It was like it was batting me away to get to my children." [...]

* The trail where the encounter took place has been closed, but there are no plans to hunt and kill the cat, they said.

* Coder does not believe the cat should be destroyed, saying, "he was doing what mountain lions do."

Mother and three children fend off mountain lion attack

4. Send them to a protected area

I can't put my finger on a link right now, but I read yesterday about a woman who runs a shelter, and is changing her mind about the wisdom of keeping these beautiful animals in such facilities. I don't know how widespread this feeling is, but my guess is that most people in environmental circles don't want them shot, and want them to run wild.

By Openeyes:

Maybe some people will have the skill/evolution level to be able to safely live around cougars, but that doesn't work for most people at this point (or at least it's not perceived as worth the risk).

Even experienced hunters get ambushed by cougars; their biological adaptation makes them superior to us in most every way. That's why the pioneers were bent on extirpating them.

How does anyone live safely around a creature that can jump 15 feet straight up, is a master of camouflage and stealth, can take down a bull elk singlehandedly, and that increasingly sees humans as a food source?

PS: "Bear country" like "lion country" is increasingly everywhere. The people in New Jersey worry about their children at school bus stops--and we know the kids can't pack heat.