On September 18, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission approved killing up to 18 mountain lions over three years in the Trout Creek Mountains as part of an effort to support a bighorn sheep relocation.
The Mountain Lion Foundation is disappointed in the decision and opposes the planned preemptive killing.
The authorization allows the removal of up to half of the estimated local cougar population in the area where bighorn sheep will be released. Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife plans call for removing approximately 10 cougars before the sheep arrive, followed by individual removals after release
Bighorn Sheep Survival Is a Real Concern
MLF shares the goal of conserving bighorn sheep and recognizes the losses that prompted Oregon officials to act.
Of 15 sheep relocated in 2024, only three survived beyond one year. Six were killed by cougars, three died from capture myopathy — a condition associated with the stress of capturing and handling wild animals — and three died from unknown causes.
Those results warrant careful attention to predation.
But they also demonstrate why the next relocation should address multiple sources of mortality. The results do not, by themselves, establish that reducing the local mountain lion population before sheep are released is necessary.
Questions That Still Need Answers
ODFW has identified an intended outcome of 70 percent survival among relocated sheep after one year, with cougars responsible for less than 40 percent of deaths.
Those targets provide a way to measure the relocation, but important questions remain.
What evidence supports the proposed scale of preemptive mountain lion killing?
How were nonlethal approaches and potential changes to the capture, transport and release of bighorn sheep weighed against cougar removal?
And how will monitoring distinguish the effects of killing mountain lions from improvements made to the relocation process itself?
Meeting a survival target would not, on its own, demonstrate that removing cougars produced that result.
Conserving One Native Species Should Not Come at the Unnecessary Expense of Another
Oregon has a responsibility to conserve both bighorn sheep and mountain lions.
Supporting the recovery and genetic health of bighorn sheep does not require accepting this particular approach without scrutiny.
The Mountain Lion Foundation is asking ODFW to reconsider the preemptive removals and provide a transparent comparison of strategies that could improve bighorn sheep survival while avoiding unnecessary mountain lion deaths.
These cats deserve more than an assurance that the statewide population can withstand the losses.
Wildlife management should ask not simply whether animals can be killed, but whether killing them is necessary and supported by the evidence.
Take Action: Let Oregon’s Fish and Wildlife Commission know your concerns about this decision and urge reconsideration of the preemptive cougar removals by emailing odfw.commission@odfw.oregon.gov.
