FEATURE - Wildlife champion Goodall embraces American cougar
Date: 28-Nov-02
Country: USA
Author: Craig Reid
The cougar, also called the puma or mountain lion, once roamed all 48 contiguous U.S. states and had the largest animal land range in the Western hemisphere.
But it is now extinct in the East and can only be found in 12 Western states where it is still hunted and killed.
"I was shocked to discover this great predator is still hunted and how it was hunted. I always assumed that cougars were protected across America," 68-year-old Goodall told Reuters on a trip to southern California to lend her support to the Cougar Fund.
Born in Britain, Goodall became one of the best-known experts on chimpanzees after being taken under the wing of anthropologist Louis Leakey in the late 1950s and conducting famous studies of the apes in Tanzania.
But it was only a few years ago, after her first trip to the famed Yellowstone National Park, that she became aware of the plight of the cougar when renowned wildlife photographer Thomas Mangelsen showed her the documentary "Spirit of the Rockies."
EASY HUNTING
Sport and trophy hunting of cougars was banned in California under a 1991 law. Yet other western states including Wyoming, Idaho and Montana - which are home to the vast Yellowstone park - and Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Washington and Utah still allow cougar hunts.
They are also the only animal in the United States allowed to be shot when they have dependent young and at the current rate of killing, wildlife experts say, they will soon be gone.
Cara Blessley Lowe, co-founder of the Cougar Fund and director of the "Spirit" documentary, told Reuters:
"Twenty years ago the cougar...was changed from a bounty animal, which could be killed on a whim by anyone, to a trophy animal where you need a permit to kill them. Game and fish agencies claim this to be protection.
"The danger is, however, that cougars are being killed without knowing how many there are, and each year the quota of allowable kills is being raised based on hunters' anecdotal claims of finding cougar footprints, saying that this means high populations," Lowe said.
A cougar hunt entails a third-party entrepreneur hiring trackers who use dogs and high-tech devices to trap a cougar in a tree. Several days elapse before the hunter arrives and shoots the animal.
"In Texas, there is no hunting season for cougars. You can hunt them throughout the year and can kill them at any age, any sex and use any method, including poison," Goodall said.
"Besides being an important part of American wildlife heritage and the tragedy that our grandchildren might only see these beautiful creatures in pictures, the cougar plays an important role in the ecosystem, top of the food chain, and we are increasingly destroying the food chain," she added.
A 1960s study by scientist Maurice Hornocker showed that cougars alone could not seriously affect deer and elk populations, casting doubt on the argument that cougars must be shot to preserve the local game.
Lowe says that the Cougar Fund is not an anti-hunting organisation. "We're working to form a coalition with deer and elk hunters to call on state game and fish agencies to protect female cougars and preserve their habitat."
In 1999, after 15,000 people flocked to the National Elk Refuge near Grand Teton National Park to observe the rare event of a mother cougar and three kittens living in the wild, Wyoming doubled the cougar kill quota in that area.
"We're concentrating our initial efforts in Yellowstone National Park, America's crown jewel and first park, and the Grand Tetons where those cougars appeared, because once we get a foothold in Wyoming, we can work with other states," Lowe said.
LESSEN FEARS
"We also wish to lessen people's fears about cougars. Less than 16 people have been killed since 1900 and the odds of being killed by a cougar are 10,000 times less than being struck by lightning," Lowe added.
Apart from her involvement in the Cougar Fund, Goodall was e
