Oregon cougar plan based on fictions, not facts

If anybody should be afraid of cougars, you’d think it would be me. It’s pretty certain that a cougar killed two fawns near our house recently, and my dog-walking routine takes me right through this area near dusk (or even after dark).

But I don’t worry about being attacked by a cougar because the risk is infinitesimal. I’m at about thirty times greater risk of being struck by lightning. So what is the problem that the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s much-debated plan to proactively kill cougars is trying to solve?

Short answer: there isn’t one. The Oregon Cougar Management Plan is based on fictions, not facts. It’s an emotional reaction to the existence of a natural predator that hasn’t attacked a person in this state during the past thirteen years.

Eugene’s Predator Defense organization has posted a critique of the ODFW cougar plan from Rick Hopkins, Ph.D., senior wildlife ecologist with Live Oak Associates. It’s devastating.

There’s no rational reason to go out and kill cougars just because they exist, and might pose a threat to a person one day. That “might” is an exceedingly flimsy excuse for spending loads of taxpayer dollars in a misguided attempt to reduce an already negligible risk.

Here are the facts of the matter as Hopkins presents them in his October 31, 2005 comments on the Draft 2005 Oregon Cougar Management Plan. I’ve slightly edited excerpted remarks for clarity.
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(1) Cougars clearly represent almost no threat to humans. In all of North America over the last 112 years there are only about 100 documented cases of cougars attacking people, with 17 deaths resulting from the attacks. A disproportionate number of these attacks have occurred in the past 30 years, but this likely is due to the increase in the human population.

Since 1990 Washington state has recorded 8 attacks, California 7, and Oregon 0. [Yes, that’s right: zero.] The risk of an attack is probably on the order of 1 in 100 million or more. It is amazing that the ODFW feels compelled to concern themselves with cougar/human incidents that affect two to three people per year (one or two children at most) in all of North America.

(2) Sport hunting or other means of killing cougars don’t reduce the risk to humans of an attack. The belief that increased killing of cougars will reduce the risk of an attack is simply not based on any scientific analysis and is logically deficient. If you reduced the cougar population in the state by 10% and assumed this meant your risk improved by 10%, you have simply shifted the odds from 1 in 100 million to 1 in 110 million. In other words, it is simply immeasurable: you would have no way to know that you had any effect.

An extensive analysis of attack statistics across North America have caused me to conclude that the intensity of sport-hunting is not at all correlated with a concomitant change in the risk to humans. Simply put, sport-hunting is irrelevant with questions related to human safety threats. California has more people, more cougars, and no sport-hunting season for 33 years and yet ranks near the bottom of risk rate.

The best advice is to not try to micro-manage cougar populations to reduce rare events: there is simply no science to support it.

(3) Most sightings of cougars are false. Dr. Beier studied a population of cougars in Southern California. He determined that 70-90% of reports of cougars along the urban/rural interface were false sightings. [See my “Oregon cougar sighting really a kitty cat” post] Thus, changes in “sighting data” is more a measure of changes in people’s attitudes or anxieties related to the cougar and has almost no relevance for evaluating changes in cougar populations.

In reality, the Plan as proposed would not reduce the risk of being attacked in Oregon, as the current risk is so small as not to be reasonably measured. Those Oregonians (and tourists) who live or recreate in cougar country expose themselves daily to many more risky activities and yet they never consider nor concern themselves with the true risk these activities pose.
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Hopkins also says, “The yearning to get back to nature has inadvertently created an increased anxiety between people and the very nature they want to experience.” Good point. We call them wildlife for a reason. They are wild.

I can’t understand this fear of wildness. Maybe it is a Christian thing—dominance over nature and all that. Too many people have this unnatural idea that nature has to be managed and obsessively controlled rather than left alone.

How about coming up with a Cougar Unmanagement Plan, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife? That blank piece of paper would save lots of your time and our money. There’s no need to try to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. Leave cougars alone.

You can submit a comment on the ODFW Cougar plan by email: [email protected]

Comments

[Mac]

Careful.
Neither side in a passionate debate appears to have a reasonable approach.
Spending taxpayer dollars to kill a few cougar is ‘just plain misguided’, because city people do not like using dogs to “Tree Cats”. In some areas, there are enough cougar that they hang around the school yards and back yards. (Silver Lake and Christmas Valley). That means too many cats in that area.

Seeing a cougar in the woods does NOT mean it needs to die. Seeing a cougar in my sheep barn or hanging out at the local grade school means it needs to learn that people are dangerous and at the worst to die. I grew up seeing and being out with a lot of cougar in the Columbia gorge area and our children grew up with them in the coast range. You watch and respond. You do not run or turn your back on them any more than turning your back on cross-bred bull or a buck goat in breeding season. You are going get hurt.
When cougar have no fear of man, either from starvation or acclamation; they need to be retrained to stay back and we need to leave them some room.

When they wait on your porch for the kitty cat or the pups to show, it is time to kill them.
Do not be naïve. Great pious words and big programs have no-place for most of us or the cats.
You are both wrong and ODFW is weak willed, because of politics.

[greenink]

Mac, read the stats in the post. Cougars are not a threat to humans, period. We could save more people in a month than cougars will kill in a decade by lowering the speed limit by 5 mph.

In terms of population, cougars are threatened, people are not. Hence, if anyone needs to be protected in this debate, it is the cougars. People need to learn that they were not put here by some higher power to run the place as they see fit. They share a shrinking planet, and if the 1-in-100 million chance of being attacked by a cougar is too great, well, there are a lot of nice quiet apartments downtown.

[Brian]

I think This plan is a bad thing. But I agree more with Mac on this. I've seen more Cougars than probably most people do in a lifetime, I've seen 7 cougars in the last 10 years either cross road in front of me or during a hike, I've had one cougar actually stalk me(Heck if there really are 0 attacks.. then I could have been the first in oregon) And I didn't think that any of them needed to be killed just becasue I saw them, But The one that was stalking me, He was getting pretty close to having his name on my needs to die list, sorry but when it comes to human verses Cougar I value the Humans life more!!! Lucky for me things turned out OK. I was out in the Mountains and they are a part a nature.. I accept that, but I don't think many people would dissagree when I say that Wildlife should be managed properly, Not mis-managed, not protected. I know there are both sides and plenty of people that would say they should be "protected" Paying the government to Kill cougars isn't managing cougars. It's wasting them. So I have to agree while still disagreing, I don't think this plan is the right way to manage cougars. I think it wastes them. Funny, But I would rather take back my vote for BM 18 than watch them kill cougars and waste them

[Jeff]

We have had alot of animals in are area missing including our dog lately. I can't be positive it was a cougar, but pretty darn sure. If these cougars are coming into our property and getting our animals, they are probably watching us to...and we could be next. I don't want to be the one. Let's be realistic,if a cougar is suspect in our neighborhood and it is spotted Im going to assume it is the animal killer and kill it. Law or no law, rights or no rights.

[Angelw4x4]

Who wants to be the first death in Oregon? There are attacks by cougars in Oregon, it has happened and it will happen again with more serious consequeces. Are we seriously willing to wait until the problem gets worse? because it probably will. I know you are saying "probably?" "we can't kill these animals based on a 'probably'" but would you be willing to risk your life or the life of your child or let's say your grandchildren on it? Not me!

[Brian]

Angelw4b4, using your reasoning we definitely should kill all of the pit bull dogs in Oregon, along with other dangerous breeds.

They've already showed that they kill children. So what are we waiting for? Clearly dogs are a lot more dangerous than cougars, because quite a few people have been killed by dogs, and none by cougars.

I assume you also want to ban mountain climbing, motorcycling, ATV riding, and other activities that kill people.

Where do we stop with an attitude of "If there's even a slight risk, we have to get rid of it"? That sounds like Big Brother to me.

What ever happened to "live free or die"? I don't want government deciding that I have to be protected from a minuscule risk of a cougar attack just so some people can feel fully protected when they walk around in the woods.

Life is dangerous. For everyone. All of the time. Driving in a car is a lot more dangerous than walking in cougar country, but people do that every day. Why do cougars make some so afraid?

I can't figure it out.

[Jason]

Being attacked by a cougar is only a minimal part of the cougar problem.When the liberal ,animal rights freaks voted out the only humane,sure way to manage the cougar population it is the deer,and elk that suffer.And because of this it is the dog killing in the parking lot groups like petas fault that the deer and elk are suffering. Jason

[Ash]

These too-far to the left West Coast liberals want to save the cougar population at the expense of many other species. So there's no net gain for the entire animal kingdom here.

If the cougar population is too high, they face starvation and will suffer anyway. That is, unless they kill livestock, pets or humans.

Folks have heard of the predator-prey model in school. They should use that knowledge to think of what happens when the cougars can't find enough deer, elk and sheep to eat.

And what happens when the prey move to areas where the people are? The cougars will follow. Some towne in the West have seen that happen.

[suck it]

yes there has been attacks on humans in the past thirteen years in oregon.

[Jeremy]

YES! cougar may not pose the great threat to people but the deer and elk are geting the worst of this situation by far. iv hunted the same area all my life in the wilson unit. i have baged a buck the last 3 yrs but not this year, instead i got my first cougar and saw 1 other. this is the first time i have seen a cat in the woods and the first time i have had trouble finding the deer. A few of the locals i know have also got cats and many more have seen them. Yet no one can seem to get a deer this year. Cougars are up and deer and elk are down. im not for an all out slaughter of the cats but a decrease in the population would do humans and other wildlife a great deal of good. i think they should legalize dogs again for a year or 2 and then stop it again and do this when the cat population is up.

[Roger]

Jeremy,

What does "legalize dogs" mean? Your comment seems unusual.

[Rain]

Dogs scent the cougars and tree them-- assuming the dogs don't get killed which does happen. They used to do this out where I live, you'd hear them at night (sometimes after raccoons). There were still plenty of cougars but more got hunted as it's not easy to see and shoot one out in the wild without the dogs to find them. And if you think that's bad for the raccoons, they carry diseases like rabies and if their population grows too much, it can get out of balance also.

[db]

Anyone who values an animals life more than a human needs there head examined california has an estimation of about 5000 cougars while oregon has an estimated 6000. Now consider wat kind of ppl u have hiking in both these states. There is not one persin i know in our great state of oregon that doesnt hike without some sort of weapon. Which tells me they r dominant. Were as my freinds and cousins that go camping in california want to j get along w all animals created and live in harmony. Cats r one if not the smartest predators out there and can sense wats worth the fight and wats not. Im not saying we need to pay the state to do it there r plenty of capable and willing oregonians that r. For all the far left animal protectors that j want harmony go watch the film grizzly man who valued the bears life more than his and his fiances. The outdoors are not just for predators they are himans outdoors as well

[Sdf Sd]

Your 10% argument is made with complete ignorance of the science. It is a geometric not arithmatic calculation due in part to crowding of hunting lands. If game and land is abundant, the cats would virtually never attack humans. As more and more cats squeeze each other out of hunting ranges, they're "forced" into human habitat. If one cat lives near my home (and one does) my kids have a nearly infinitely greater chance of being attacked than if one doesn't live there. Leave logic to those who can think and go smoke more of your dope.

[Jim Drew]

Don't agree with California FACTS .If I RECALL California was forced to shut down a vast area of forest to young adult under 18 years old because the cougars were preying on children . Kids are the same size as easy pray and they are more apt to run around like prey. They tried to open it to all again and had the same results the first week.This sort of thing does not happen in Oregon because we see it fit to manage them . I love them as much as the next guy , but game management is a necessary evil.Thanks for the great info on things you have experienced and posted. Thanks [James Drew].

[Brian Hines]

Jim, only two children have ever been killed by a cougar in California, and that was in 1890 and 1909. See:
http://www.dfg.ca.gov/news/issues/lion/attacks.html

There have been four non-fatal attacks on children in the past 107 years, 1890-2007. So there's very little risk to children from cougars. If you want to keep children safe, keep them away from dogs and humans, especially human males.

Those creatures are much more dangerous to children than cougars are.