What to do about a Mountain Lion? Any advice?

[jeremy]

Why has nobody considered a more human approach? (Other than call your local Game & Wildlife and have them deal with it...)

Call me a bleeding heart liberal, but these big cats are living creatures just like you're chickens and calves that they're carrying off. And the only injustice they're doing is trying to survive. It's not their fault you decided to build your homestead in the middle of what once was their territory.

I don't understand why people automatically assume they have the right to come in, bulldoze everything over and take out whatever gets in their way all for the sake of their "little piece of heaven on earth". It's irrational and dangerous.

Instead of using a 22 mm rifle, or the SSS method of dealing with the animal why not call and ask for a wildlife relocation effort? Tranquilizers work just as well as bullets- actually better, because nobody has to lose their life.

I understand you're concern for your family and your flock but have you looked at the flip side of the situation? Perhaps the mountain lion is encrouching on "your" land because her natural food supply is running low where developers have forced her to move. Or to feed her pack of cubs?

But nobody considers that aspect. Shoot first and ask questions later.

Typical American mentality.

 

[azelgin]

Quote:
I suppose pedophiles and serial killers need homes too. But , I'd just as soon it not be in my neighborhood. When you have a lion stalking you while outside doing chores, maybe, you'll come to have a different view of the situation.

 

[espressola]

Jeremy, in Northern CA, where you and I both live and I had our mountain lion experience, relocation is NOT an option as I mentioned previously. When you have a small child(ren) as do I, the mountain lion starts looking like a more dangerous adversary. I was just fine when they were hunting up in my backcountry, but I live on a ranch whose size/population density has not changed in fifty years- but there are now 2-3 times the number of big cats here as there were then, due to the ban on hunting. I am a bleeding heart liberal and felt badly about the choice I made- but I still made it.
Patty N.

 

[greathorse]

 

[Cara]

Quote:
Likewise, all we're trying to do is make a living... without our horses being killed, run through fences, and mutilated. Have you ever seen a dead horse, its neck broken when it tripped trying to jump the fence? Missing eyes, clawed out? Its throat raked out by a lion, and it's still alive?

When the bleeding hearts have their pets killed by mountain lions, their attitude soon changes.

 

[rachaelc]

I watched a program on "60 Minutes' the other weekend. The Massai tribe in Africa is poisoning the African lion so it won't eat their cattle. It sounds like a lot of people in the US are in favor of shooting mountain lions to protect their livestock. Either country, we win, lions lose. It's to bad we have come so far as humans, (or so we think) and figured out so little. How do we explain to children why only certain animals or birds live in captivity because in the wild they are extinct. Oh yeah, humans do this to each other as well. Might makes right. Manifest destiny. I'm human therefore everything is for my disposal. It takes bleeding heart liberals, rednecks and good ,hardworking ,honest ,conscious people who love this earth and this life to try to come up with something other then the status quo at times. Like the bumper sticker says,"A brain is like a parachute, it only functions when it's open.
My mom also said,"Life isn't fair"
Rachael C- mother of all
P.S. Can't relocate lion, then scare it off. But don't kill it if you absolutely do not have too. No dogs either. my 2pennies

 

[azelgin]

Quote:
Sorry, it doesn't always work that way. When preditors lose their fear of humans, that's not a realistic option.

 

[Chicken Rustler]

Well I think there is a very fine line here. On one side are people who live in areas that have been recently developed and thus displacing any wild life that had lived there. And then on the other side we have the people who live on land that has been farms etc for years but due to bans on hunting the populations are growing and causing the animals to be pushed into populated areas.
If you think about it most of the hunting bans have been the work of the Bleeding hearts. So the simple solution is relocation, to the homes of the bleeding hearts and let them deal with the problem they have created.

 

[espressola]

Heh heh....

 

[Judy]

IMHO:

Bottom line is, there are already too many people in the world, and we have ruined the natural balance.

There are no long term rational solutions that support the proliferation of both humans and other creatures, which is why these conversations endlessly recur. Humans will continue to alter the natural balance until it reaches a point where other life forms no longer can support our existence.

This is not really a surprise to many. So we just keep hoping we can keep our local balance in good enough shape to get through our own lifetime.