Yuma — The Arizona Game and Fish Department has been making misleading statements about the role pumas play in bighorn population levels and has had to issue one public correction. Other uncorrected misstatements raise doubts about whether the state game agency will honor a one-year moratorium against killing more panthers that it had agreed to just last week, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
In a press release of April 18, 2008 announcing a year-long halt to further “lethal removal” of pumas (a.k.a. mountain lions, cougars or panthers), Arizona Game and Fish Department (AGFD) wrongly claimed that the bighorn population on Kofa National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) continued to drop and that “lions were likely a significant cause of bighorn mortality.” In fact, the agency’s own surveys showed the bighorn population had grown by nearly 18% in 2007.
On April 24th, AGFD issued a corrected press release blaming false statements on a “typographical error.” The corrected release still did not admit that the bighorn population had increased and it left unchanged questionable assertions about the significance of cougars in bighorn population fluctuations.
“Arizona Game and Fish seems engaged in biological McCarthyism against the small at-risk remaining population of Kofa pumas,” stated Southwest PEER Director Daniel Patterson, noting that AGFD had recently killed two Kofa pumas. “Killing pumas for being wild in nature is misguided wildlife management.”
One more panther death may doom the last three cougars thought to remain on the Kofa NWR, according to Ron Kearns, a former longtime wildlife biologist at the refuge who has been critical of agency wildlife management practices. The puma removal campaign by AGFD is rooted in questionable assumptions –
- The gain of nearly 70 bighorn sheep in 2007 occurred before AGFD had killed even the second lion from Kofa, meaning that the population rebound was not threatened by pumas;
- An earlier loss of more than 400 bighorn over the previous two-year period could not be ascribed to mountain lions unless AGFD assumed that the estimated five remaining lions were eating 40 bighorn apiece, an absurdly high quota; and
- AGFD’s own studies pointed to drought and drought-related diseases as the main culprits in prior sharp bighorn losses.
In the Yuma Sun of April 21st, just days after it announced a one-year moratorium, Gary Hovatter, the Yuma Game and Fish Office information manager, is credited with the following statement:
“Game and Fish said it will still continue to kill offending lions off the refuge if necessary.”
“Arizona Game and Fish has not clarified its intentions or promised to keep puma location information confidential to protect the research animals,” added Patterson, an ecologist. “The predator-prey relationship is important for healthy bighorn herds, and there should be room for the rare desert pumas on a huge national wildlife refuge.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (which operates Kofa NWR) has announced that it is preparing a mountain lion management plan that will be open for public comment during a one-month period ending May 24, 2008. PEER asked the Fish & Wildlife Service to prepare the overdue plan, to avoid a lawsuit for violating federal law in conducting any further panther removals before the environmental assessment of its plan is completed.
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See the “corrected” AGFD announcement of moratorium on puma eradication
Look at PEER’s intervention leading to the moratorium
View the AGFD announcement of the 2007 increase in bighorn population
Read the Kofa Refuge reply to PEER
Examine U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service announcement on developing a mountain lion management plan
Comment on the FWS mountain lion plan
KofaLionComments@fws.gov
Read Ron Kearns’ critique of state and federal mountain lion management
Compare AGFD posting on the role of disease in bighorn mortality