JACKSON, Wyo. — A new paper examining peer-reviewed research adds support to the persisting theory that trophy hunting mountain lions creates social chaos among disrupted cat populations and increases the likelihood of human-lion conflict.
The study takes a scientific survey of previously published literature on the ecological benefits of mountain lions and the impacts of trophy hunting, discouraging the claim of many wildlife agencies that this type of hunting helps control mountain lion populations or reduce conflicts with humans and livestock.
“Mountain lions are self-regulating and will not overpopulate even in the absence of shooting by trophy hunters,” Dr. Jim Keen, former U.S. Department of Agriculture scientist and faculty member at the University of Nebraska who is the primary author of the study, writes in a press release shared with Buckrail.
The Mountain Lion Foundation substantiates this idea, writing on its website that mountain lion populations are limited by food and territorial behavior and therefore have a carrying capacity that they won’t naturally exceed. And Executive Director of The Cougar Fund Penelope Maldonado previously told Buckrail that, despite a perpetuating narrative, mountain lions and their naturally regulated numbers are not responsible for mule deer herd depletion.
Keen actually stresses the significance of mountain lions’ regulation of high deer and elk densities, which exist in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. As a keystone species, mountain lions help reduce both herd impacts on forestry and cervid-vehicle collisions through predation, while also selectively removing weaker individuals suffering from Chronic Wasting Diseases and potentially transmitting it.
“We kill cougars through sport-take and control efforts not because hunting has been shown to be an important management tool, but because it is tradition,” Dr. Rick Hopkins, board president of The Cougar Fund and cougar field researcher, writes. “To argue that hunting is needed for population management is an overly simplistic argument about natural systems—one that conflicts with both predation theory and evidence.”
Keen contends that trophy hunting is actually increasing the human-lion conflicts, while management agencies claim trophy hunting helps reduce them; research shows a positive association between mountain lion hunting and human conflict reports the following year.
According to Keen and to research from the Humane Society of the U.S., in addition to other sources, increased conflict likely stems from the fact that when a trophy hunter takes a dominant male, the age structure of a mountain lion population is altered and creates a vacancy in territories. This vacancy allows younger and less experienced males to take over territories, and these males are more likely to seek non-traditional prey like livestock or pets due to less knowledge of the territory and available prey. They also face more competition over deer and elk from other males.
The Mountain Lion Foundation calls this dynamic the “source-sink” phenomenon, where a heavily hunted population gets filled in by dispersing males who are younger and less experienced hunters who decrease safety for livestock, people and pets.
But Dan Thompson, WGFD large carnivore section supervisor, tells Buckrail that WGFD manages lions locally based on trend and does consider sex and age structure of local populations.
While a majority of hunt areas in Wyoming do have varying mortality limits, with the Teton area having the lowest limit of three mountain lions per season, there are still very high quotas (up to 30 lions) in other hunt units, and a number of areas with unlimited quotas.
