Saturday, March 8, 2025 | 2 a.m.
Mule deer herds are declining throughout the West for a lot of causes. However three states — Utah, Wyoming and Nevada — need to each pin the blame on mountain lions and “resolve” the difficulty by utilizing merciless traps.
In 2023, Utah legislators opened the floodgates to year-round lion looking and trapping and not using a public involvement course of. Nevada continues to withstand trapping reforms. And in Wyoming, a proposed legislation permitting lion looking and trapping with out restrictions was thwarted solely after legislators heard overwhelming opposition from residents in addition to the state’s wildlife division.
A latest examine discovered that almost all mountain lions who fall sufferer to traps are hungry moms, pushed to feed themselves and their kittens. However lifeless moms can’t nourish orphaned kittens, who’re left to starve.
State businesses use the survival of grownup females as a measure for sustaining lion populations. Utah information present that in 2024, the feminine lion mortality price reached an unsustainable 60%.
The state’s carnivore supervisor not too long ago admitted that Utah’s lion populations are in decline. He additionally advised a legislative committee final fall that “we have to maintain our foot on the fuel” to proceed to suppress feminine lions. At that very same assembly, his boss mentioned extended drought had taken a toll on mule deer numbers.
It solely makes issues worse that, in January 2025, Utah’s wildlife board authorized the sale of mountain lion pelts, claws and skulls on international markets.
In distinction, Wyoming’s Home Invoice 0286, which might have eliminated quotas, season limits and prohibitions on trapping mountain lions, did not make it previous its first committee listening to. The values of participatory democracy and science-based administration received the day.
One other downside with traps is that they indiscriminately kill nontarget species, together with endangered animals, deer, raptors and pets. But Nevada continues to prioritize trappers’ pursuits over moral and organic issues.
In January, Nevada’s wildlife commissioners denied a citizen petition that sought to change trapping laws to forestall the struggling and deaths of mountain lions caught in traps set for different animals. Overlooking robust arguments, the fee voted to uphold its present time restrict for checking traps to 96 hours.
This implies lions or different trapped animals might undergo for days in leghold traps or foot snares till the trapper arrives to kill them.
Right here’s the essential problem: States blame lions for the decline in mule deer, however science makes it clear that the West’s populations undergo most from the threats of recent life.
Highways, housing and vitality improvement fragment the land, whereas cattle and sheep compete for habitat. Different pressures come from overhunting, poaching, wildfire, noxious weeds, drought, and fluctuations in snowpack and temperatures.
There’s additionally power losing illness, a deadly, infectious prion illness that impacts deer, elk and moose. Mountain lions and different native carnivores play a crucial position in limiting and even halting the unfold of CWD.
In a Wyoming examine, biologists discovered that 28% of mule deer in two populations had been contaminated, and that lions primarily preyed upon sick people. A Colorado examine equally revealed that mountain lions killed extra diseased deer than human hunters and that lions consumed over 85% of the carcasses, thus eradicating substantial quantities of prion contamination from the atmosphere.
In contrast to human hunters who goal the healthiest people in a inhabitants, carnivores selectively prey on diseased animals. Lions are wanted to keep up wholesome herds, and if states had been sensible, they’d acknowledge their worth to our ecosystems.
The contrasting attitudes of those three states illustrate a bigger battle over managing wildlife within the West. Utah has embraced a market-driven method that prioritizes industrial pursuits over conservation.
Wyoming, even with its robust looking tradition, acknowledged that unregulated mountain lion killing was too radical. Nevada, regardless of requires reform, stays caught in outdated, merciless insurance policies.
For the sake of the West’s ecosystems, we’d like wildlife businesses and lawmakers to take a look at the info and cease scapegoating native carnivores. Anybody who needs to hunt ample mule deer herds must face the fact that the West’s landscapes are degraded.
Lions, although, are to not blame.
Wendy Keefover is a contributor to Writers on the Vary, writersontherange.org, an impartial nonprofit devoted to spurring dialog in regards to the West. She is senior strategist for native carnivore safety for Humane World for Animals.
