Locally-Killed Mountain Lion Was One of 100 Or So Calif Cougar Killings Each Year
Written by 991KBU on February 13, 2020
Outage is simmering across the state … after news that a rancher near Camarillo shot and killed a male mountain lion who lived in the mountains above Malibu.
P-56 was killed under a state permit … because he had returned to the sheep ranch.
The rancher had been able to drive off the cougar using dogs and loud radios … but after 8 months … the cougar returned and ate another lamb.
The rancher asked for and was given a permit to kill the mountain lion … under a state law that gives ranchers that right.
Statewide, an estimated 100 so-called “nuisance” mountain lions are killed every year under such permits, officials said.
Joe Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, says the kill permit was an egregious act.
Edmiston offered to spend his own personal money so that doesn’t happen again.
Malibu-area member of the Ventura County Board of Supervisors went further.
She said it would be better to relocate lambs from the local area … than get rid of the last mountain lions living in the Santa Monica Mountains.”
Meanwhile in Sacramento … there is a move to protect the cougars living in the Santa Monica Mountains a bit further … by listing them as threatened under the state Endangered Species Act.
The legal impact of this … not yet clear.
Listing mountain lions as a threatened species could limit highway construction and development on a large scale.
But there are no highway construction projects or big real estate in the pipeline in the local area.
