Arizona Opinion: Protecting Arizona’s mountain lions

Mountain lions are essential to ecosystems. Their cached kills provide food for many other wildlife species, their selective predation keeps herds free of disease, and their presence protects sensitive waterways from overgrazing and degradation. These magnificent and charismatic carnivores should be allowed to not only survive, but also flourish.

A small number of hunters kill between 300-350 mountain lions in Arizona every year. Of the many areas with high levels of mountain lion hunting, Game Management Unit 33, which borders the east side of Tucson and encompasses East Saguaro National Park, is one of the worst. According to state hunting records, hunters killed an average of 14 mountain lions per year in Unit 33 from 2015-2020, the highest level of any hunting unit in Arizona.

The Arizona Game and Fish Department (AZGFD) is responsible for managing mountain lion hunting. It determines the dates and length of the hunting seasons, as well as the gender and total number of mountain lions hunters can “harvest” each year. The number of female lions that are killed is important as adult females spend over 75% of their time raising kittens, according to the AZGFD.

Right now, the AZGFD is updating its five-year hunt guidelines, and it plans to maintain current mountain lion hunting levels and season structures. So why should we care?

First, mountain lion hunting can cause significant animal cruelty. Most hunters use hounds to chase lions until they are exhausted, cornered and shot. Additionally, hunters who kill female mountain lions can orphan their kittens. Take Poppy, a kitten found pawing at the door of a chicken coop in the winter of 2020-2021, shortly after an adult female was killed in the area. Luckily, officials brought Poppy to the Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center.

Most are not so lucky. When hunters kill female lions, any kittens they have under 6 months old have only a 4% chance of survival. In 2020, the most recent hunting season for which harvest data is available, 10 out of 14 mountain lions killed in Unit 33 were female, according to the AZGFD’s data.

Second, mountain lion hunting can exacerbate human-lion conflicts such as livestock depredations and complaints from people when mountain lions enter urban areas. Researchers hypothesize that this phenomenon may occur because consistent removal of established adult mountain lions shifts the age class to young, dispersing mountain lions. These youngsters are less familiar with the new territory they venture into, less experienced at hunting, and more likely to seek easier prey such as pets or livestock.

Third, mountain lion hunting is not necessary for protecting prey populations. Mountain lions and deer, their main prey source, co-evolved for millennia before modern levels of hunting began. Moreover, a recent study of 11 Western states found no correlation between deer populations and mountain lion hunting in most states. Interestingly, for the states that did exhibit a correlation, the correlation was negative, meaning more lion hunting actually coincided with decreased deer populations the following year.

If mountain lion hunting continues, it should at least be managed in a way to reduce cruelty, mitigate conflict and allow lions to flourish.

To this end, a peer-reviewed study from Wildlife Society Bulletin recommends limiting hunting to a maximum of 14% of the adult lion population, which AZGFD estimates is 1,470 individuals. That means no more than 206 lions killed per year, way under current hunting levels. Another peer-reviewed study from experts at the conservation group Panthera also recommends prohibiting hunting when female lions have kittens, which AZGFD biologists estimate occurs from August to December. Currently, the AZGFD allows lion hunting during this time.

Prioritizing mountain lion stewardship not only helps lions, but also the myriad wildlife species that benefit from their presence, as well as the Arizonans who live among them.

Please consider attending the Arizona Game and Fish Commission meeting on April 1 at the Phoenix AZGFD office or at your regional AZGFD office where the meeting will be broadcast live. Those who attend at an AZGFD office can give a two-minute comment on the hunt guidelines, the second item on the meeting agenda. If you comment, please encourage the commission to adopt common sense and humane measures for mountain lion stewardship.

For more information on mountain lion hunting in Arizona and how to improve the management of our state’s mountain lions visit https://mountainlion.org/us/arizona/#!action

For more information on attending the April 1 meeting visit https://azgfd-portal-wordpress-pantheon.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/archive/4.01.22-CommAgenda.pdf