Cougar Consciousness: The Predators Are Back!

[openeyes]

Originally Posted by wolfgang

Or let every kid have a pet deer that they walk around with and the cougars will attack the deer instead.

I imagine deer run faster than humans, particularly little kids, and predators usually go for the easiest prey (supporting natural selection in that sense). So having unarmed humans walk around with deer is likely to only protect the deer.

[Michael Chui]

You could hobble the deer. I mean, we're using them as fodder anyways.

[openeyes]

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

You could hobble the deer. I mean, we're using them as fodder anyways.

Maybe simply feed them McDonalds and hope the diet doesn't get them before the cougars do

[Megan]

Actually, just send the kids out with the dogs. Cougars are developing a real taste for dogs. Course, you may run out of dogs...unless they're big, bad Anatolian Shepherds.

The cougar sites are telling people to leave their dogs home when they go hiking and camping, or to keep them on a leash.

This year, in the Boulder area, a little boy got his jaw broken by a cougar while holding his father's hand, so I'm trying to think how that dog-on-a-leash advice might work out.

And, actually, unarmed people walk around with deer all the time in Boulder--the deer walk up and down the streets.

As I said, the problem is not acute yet, but when you can't let your kids play alone in your own back yard in lion country (or lion city, as the case may be)...wait a minute, would you call that acute or not?

One family took pictures of their kids at a back yard birthday party, and when they got the film developed, they saw a lion in the tree above the kids.

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Megan

As I said, the problem is not acute yet, but when you can't let your kids play alone in your own back yard in lion country (or lion city, as the case may be)...wait a minute, would you call that acute or not?

Heh. Sounds to me like the problem is that cougars don't understand the concept of (human) ownership and, "This is trespassing!"

[Megan]

Wish I could find the link to my favorite quote by an environmentalist about cougars. It went something like this:

These are intelligent animals! They can learn to co-exist with us!

Yeah, well, the cougar is intelligent enough to throw us a wink on that one...



"Can't we just co-exist?"

[Michael Chui]

Sure, we can co-exist. Are you tasty, Mr. Cougar? We could have a barbecue in the backyard. You eat some of us. We eat some of you. Seems fair.

[Megan]

Another great environmentalist quote. A little quid pro quo...that'd be fair, huh, Michael?

I found the quote I was looking for above, and, to be fair to Mr. Logan, I shall post it here, in context:

Mountain lions cast 'vale of fear' across the West

Deseret News (Salt Lake City)

A recent book suggests lions are becoming more threatening because they're starting to see people as prey. Published in 2003, The Beast in the Garden: A Modern Parable of Man and Nature by David Baron is set in Boulder, where mountain parks and open space abut the city limits.

As mountain lions follow deer into gardens and yards, Baron says, they may be learning to look at family pets and people as potential food.

"I think that people and mountain lions can largely coexist. The threat from mountain lions is extremely small compared to most threats we face in our daily lives," said Baron, who lives in Boston and works for Public Radio International.

Ken Logan, a nationally recognized mountain lion biologist, said Baron's book does a good job exploring how people affect the environment and wildlife. But he said science doesn't support the premise that lions are starting to view humans as dinner.

"If pumas were relying on humans for prey, people would be getting killed by pumas weekly, if not daily," said Logan, who is in the second year of a 10-year study for the state Division of Wildlife on mountain lions in western Colorado.

"These are intelligent animals. They can learn to live around humans," said Logan, who also did a study in Southern California after a fatal attack there and found that radio-collared mountain lions avoid humans.

Mountain lions cast 'vale of fear' across the West Deseret News (Salt Lake City) - Find Articles

What are they going to be "learning?" How to read "No Trespassing" signs? How to stop being the apex predators that they have a habit of being? BTW, the radio-collared lions are fond of spending whole days sleeping a few yards off human hiking trails.

For balance...or not...you decide...here's a more recent article:

Mountain lions in state's sights
By Jeremy P. Meyer
Denver Post Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 12/20/2006


Colorado wildlife commissioners are seeking ways to cut the risk of mountain-lion attacks on the Front Range, including asking county officials to allow big- game hunting on open-space lands.

Commissioners are concerned open-space properties have become refuges for mountain lions they say are increasingly viewing humans as prey.

"When they really understand the lion population and the prey base up there, it's a statistical slam dunk that something bad is about to happen," Wildlife Commissioner Rick Enstrom said.

"It's not going to be on my neck," Enstrom said.

DenverPost.com - Mountain lions in state's sights

Open-space properties are the thousands of acres of no-hunting green belts that cities like Boulder have bought up surrounding the city. Can you say, Here, kitty, kitty....

Well, that's the dilemma. I've stated it as clearly as I know how & I don't think I can say much more about it.

In our evolutionary past, we survived by developing a good set of legs, lungs and sweat glands, some effective weapons, and a neo-cortex. That was an amazing evolutionary development.

Now, we don't think in terms of individual and tribe survival exclusively, but in terms of the survival of the whole biosphere. That's quite an evolutionary move in itself, I think.

But we're still running on the fumes of the past several centuries when thinking was different and the predators were largely extirpated.

Now that we're "smiling at the cougars" too much, as David Baron termed it, they're coming back. But I think his suggestion to stop smiling at them and start scaring them out of our backyards is going to prove a day late and a dollar short.

What will our next evolutionary accomplishment be?

[Megan]

...who thinks it's neat to have cougars mating in your back yard...and making more baby cougars...who eat dogs and cats and pet bunnies...and scare the p-waddin' outta people so they can't even take their walks any more.

Actually, I'm much better. I will burn the trash now, if someone else is home. That's a huge improvement. And I will take walks now, but not alone, and not without pepper spray and a cell phone.

I'm not freakishly afraid like I was. I will actually walk out the door without remembering to scan the trees, the roofs and under the shed every single time. And I will drive places at night now, but I really still don't like getting out of the car in our woodsy little acre at night. Doing EFT helped a lot, though.

[dor]

Okay, i will read this in the morning...
but for any late night readers ....has anyone tried to use Irish wolfhounds, rhodesian ridgebacks (bread to hunt lions) or any other dog breed to keep cougars at bay??


also i have heard they are generally shy, but once they get 'addicted' to a human kill they must be killed

is it possible that like racooons and coyotes ...and humans....they have found roughing it doesn't quite measure up to comfy suburban living?

[Megan]

Dor, this sad thing happened the day after I bumped this thread for you.

SAN FRANCISCO (Jan. 29) - A Northern California hiker attacked by a mountain lion last week was airlifted to a San Francisco hospital, where he will likely undergo more surgery.

A spokesman for Mad River Community Hospital in Arcata said Sunday that doctors wanted to send 70-year-old Jim Hamm to a major research hospital in San Francisco after they performed emergency surgery on his scalp and downgraded his condition from fair to serious.

Hamm first underwent surgery Wednesday after a female mountain lion ambushed him at Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park.

He and his wife, Nell, were hiking when the lion scalped him, mauled his face, ripped off part of his lips and inflicted other puncture wounds and scratches.

Top News- Condition Worsens for Mountain Lion Victim - AOL News

The Eureka Reporter - Article

I don't know anything about Ridgebacks, but I've read that Anatolian Shepards can handle a lion:

www.trackincats.com :: View topic - Cougar Protection, Anatolian Shepherd dogs, Good Plan!

[Megan]

List of Mountain Lion Attacks On People in California

This most recent attack I spoke of in my last post is already listed on the above site in detail.

As you can see, since cougars have been protected, the number in incidents and attacks has gone way up.


From this site are links to:

List of Mountain Lion Encounters With People in California

List of Mountain Lion Attacks On People in the U.S. and Canada not including California

Mountain Lion Attacks On People in the U.S. and Canada

Cougar attack lawsuit dropped

35-year-old Mark Reynolds was attacked and half-eaten by a mountain lion, while he crouched to fix his bicycle along Cactus Ridge Trail on January 8, 2004. The same day, the same cougar attacked Anne Hjelle, who was rescued.

Reynolds's family sued Orange County, California, but dropped the suit in the face of pressure from Reynolds's fellow cyclists, who were worried that the lawsuit would provoke the county into prohibiting wilderness cycling.

Wildlife officials destroyed the cougar responsible for the attacks, but California law otherwise prohibits hunting or killing mountain lions.

Overlawyered: Cougar attack lawsuit dropped

Cougar Attacks

It seems that the number of humans attacked by cougars has been on the rise since 1980, and David Baron, author of "The Beast in the Garden", has a provocative theory to account for this:

"We are seeing a fundamental shift in mountain lion behavior," Baron said in an interview last week. "What I would say is, what we're seeing now is unnatural compared to how lions behaved for probably the last 10,000 years." ...

One of Baron's more sobering and compelling observations, at least for me, is that lions are beginning to treat humans like prey - stalking them, ambushing them and dragging them off to be consumed in the same way they would treat a deer. I find this persuasive evidence of behavioral change.

The actual number of cougar attacks on humans and their domesticated animals has hardly reached epidemic proportions. But the upward trend is disturbing, and we're likely to hear about cougars attacking humans more and more often. If you think about it - more deer living closer to humans, and more cougars familiarizing themselves with harmless humans - it makes sense.

Animal Crackers: Cougar Attacks

[Megan]

Loving Monsters

In spite of Roosevelt's efforts, what is now called "fluffy bunny" syndrome appeared, and predators were regarded as inherently evil. [...]

But then "fluffy bunny" syndrome extended itself to become "fluffy mountain lion syndrome." [...]

People were no longer scary and, after a while, started to look like food.

It's at this point that Baron's book -- which is very much nonfiction -- starts to read like a thriller novel. [...]

Scientists and outdoorsmen began to warn of danger, but they were ignored.... [...]

Dogs and cats started being eaten, cougars started threatening people, and yet meetings on the subject were dominated by people who "came to speak for the cougars."

In the end, of course, people started to be eaten, and the bureaucracy woke up to a degree. [...]

So many were so invested in the notion that by thinking peaceful thoughts they could will into existence a state of peaceful affairs that they ignored the evidence right in front of them... [...]

Some people, apparently, would rather be dinner than face up to the fact that nature is red in tooth and claw.... [...]

TCS Daily : Technology - Commerce - Society

Amazon.com: The Beast in the Garden: The True Story of a Predator's Deadly Return to Suburban America: Books: David Baron

My favorite quote again, "Who says we shouldn't be on the food chain?"

What part does "thinking peaceful thoughts" play in solving this dilemma?

Can we I-M the cougars away from our back yards and hiking trails?

[CasBit]

Aren't cougars solitary animals that required huge territories per cat? Wouldn't this limit the population potential in any given area?

There are an average of about 6 reported attacks and 1 death per year in the US and Canada. Even if the number of attacks was under-reported (I doubt the number of deaths would be under-reported) by a factor of 10, it would still be an exceeding rare occurrence. If there are cougars in Megan's neighborhood, isn't she 1000s of times more likely to get hit by a car while walking then experience an attack?

Now ranchers, especially sheep ranchers, might have an issue here, but I would think it would be trivial compared to coyotes or even feral dogs.

[Megan]

Good questions. As David Baron pointed out in his book, The Beast in the Garden, the times they are a'changin'.

The former truisms are increasingly not applicable.

With large protected deer populations in human-populated areas, the cougars are naturally going to change their habits and follow the deer.

With the protection of cougars in the past few decades, they have far less need to be reclusive and nocturnal.

They've figured out that they're safe.

Yes, I'm far more likely to get hit by a car, I agree, if we're talking about statistics.

But, let me ask you this: would you allow your toddlers to play in your fenced backyard in lion country without being present with them? IOW, how much are you willing to play the odds when it's your children at stake?

I'm back to walking again, but not alone, and not without a phone and pepper spray.

[Megan]

We've read the recent sad story from California:

Two mountain lions shot after man is attacked in state park
1/26/2007

Two mountain lions were shot and killed after one of them, it is believed, attacked a man who was hiking with his wife in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park on Wednesday afternoon.

Jim and Nell Hamm, of Fortuna, were hiking on the Brown Creek trail at approximately 3 p.m. when Jim, 70, was attacked....

“The victim’s wife (who is 65) was able to fight off the mountain lion with a tree branch and ink pen,” he said, adding that she was uninjured during the attack.

The Eureka Reporter - Article

The Cougar Foundation just sent me this e-mail:

Dear M.,

A recent attack by a mountain lion has highlighted the importance of education and preparation for living and recreating in mountain lion habitat.

While hiking with his wife in a California state park on Wednesday, Mr. Jim Hamm was attacked by a mountain lion. Armed with a stick and a ballpoint pen, Nell Hamm, age 65, successfully fought off the lion and saved her husband's life.

I sent this statement to the news agencies earlier today:


"Mr. and Mrs. Hamm did everything right. They respected their environment, recognized the risk, prepared themselves, and when the very rare incident occurred, they reacted with confidence and strength As a result, Mr. Hamm is recovering and we are grateful.

This highlights the importance of being prepared when living and recreating in mountain lion habitat. California has one of the lowest per capita rates of mountain lion attacks in the country and could serve as a model for other western states. For more on this subject, please go to www.pumaconservation.org."


I want you to know you make a difference. Every day hikers go into the wild armed with the information they need to be as safe as possible.

Your financial support of the Mountain Lion Foundation, and every time you share our message, helps us prepare people to feel safer.

Helping people live safely helps mountain lions live more safely too. We appreciate your support.

Is it just me, or is that just really...strange? As in "down-the-rabbit-hole" strange?

The Hamms "did everything right?" They carried a ball point pen as protection against a cougar? And that's why Mr. Hamm is recovering? More like the grace of God and a very brave wife, I would say.

So a 65-year-old woman fighting off a cougar with a stick and a pen is The Cougar Foundation's idea of "doing everything right" and now we should all feel safer, right?

If the Hamms were "prepared" to the satisfaction of The Cougar Foundation, then I guess we all ought to just carry ball point pens and "prepare" to be scalped, as Mr. Hamm was.

So Mr. Hamm's horrendous ordeal is cited as support that The Cougar Foundation "prepares people to feel safer?"

So we should now send The Cougar Foundation money, because someone just about got killed by a cougar?

May I suggest that one needs to be armed with more than just 'information' to be "as safe as possible" from cougars?

If not a LARGE GUN, at least a stout hunting knife and a can of pepper spray would be wise.

Why aren't the Internet sites on cougars saying that? Why isn't The Cougar Foundation saying that?

They will someday....


"Be prepared for me--carry a ball point pen."

[Michael Chui]

You mean you weren't aware that fear is the fastest way to get people to pay you?

[Megan]

Mountain lions have more right to be here than 3/4 of the people I see walking around downtown Freehold where I live.

Mountain Lions In New Jersey - Page 2 - New Jersey - City-Data Forum

The Cat: We're all mad here.
--Alice in Wonderland

[dor]

Originally Posted by Megan

They've figured out that they're safe.

.<