By Josh Rosenau, Director of Policy and Advocacy

The Mountain Lion Foundation’s staff dug deep to oppose SB 818 in California last month, but we opposed that bill knowing it was just one prong of a multi-state push against carnivores. The Mountain Lion Foundation was formed as part of the campaign that passed Proposition 117 in 1990, the landmark law which blocks mountain lion hunting and other “take” in California, including the sort of hound chases SB 818 could have permitted. Protecting that landmark achievement was essential, but the work continues in California and beyond.  

A week after the SB 818 hearing, where our staff and volunteers held the line against mountain lion hounding, our team went back to the Capitol with a similar coalition and spoke against a bill that would allow hound chases of bears. Many of the same pro-hunting groups advocated in favor of that bill, and having failed with cougar chases, were more numerous the next week. Fortunately, the coalition of wildlife supporters carried the day again there. 

These efforts are unlikely to stop in California. County boards and hunting groups statewide are probing defenses that wildlife advocates have spent years building around wild carnivores. If they gain traction with such efforts, we can be sure that it will be touted far and wide. As they push to weaken protections elsewhere, the claim will be that this is a national trend, with broad support “even in California.”  

A dramatic example is playing out today in Oklahoma. There is no evidence of a breeding population of mountain lions there, but regular dispersals from states further west mean sightings and occasional depredations. A legislator proposed a law authorizing a recreational mountain lion hunt, claiming that this was necessary and appropriate even without a breeding population. This is not the first such attempt – see for example this failed bill from 2021. Unfortunately, this year’s effort was more successful; it passed both houses of the state legislature and is now on its way to the governor for a signature.  

Fortunately, another anti-lion bill in Wyoming didn’t make it that far. The bill, HB 286, would have rolled back almost every cougar protection under current hunting laws in the Cowboy State. There would be no hunting caps, trapping and snaring would be legal, and even the boundaries for hunting management zones would be erased from state law. Fortunately, wildlife advocates and professional houndsmen rallied a united front and spoke against this horrific legislation. In the end, no public testimony favored it, and the bill was rejected in committee. 

 These bills represent the tip of an iceberg. Other legislative proposals have been floated but not brought to a hearing or a vote, and proposals for reduced protections have been proposed by other political bodies across the West. These are probes at the defenses that wildlife advocates have put around the carnivores – animals that we know to be essential to the wellbeing of our wilderness, and to the good of our society. Failed anti-wildlife proposals like these are likely to be revived, zombie-like, to stalk legislative halls for years, seeking any opening or weakness to exploit. The Mountain Lion Foundation remains committed to our work opposing these proposals, and to building the broad coalitions that will be necessary to stop these alarming anti-carnivore bills.