TEXAS MOUNTAIN LIONS ~ why should I care?
by Orie Gilad
W
est Texans have had a
long love-hate rela-
tionship with moun-
tain lions. Up until the 1930s,
when raising sheep and goats
was a primary source of their
income, ranchers suffered sub-
stantial losses from predators.
Government and local pro-
grams paid bounties and
employed trappers to eliminate
predators, including mountain
lions. Coupled with habitat
changes, the programs were
successful, and mountain lions
disappeared from the Texas
landscape, together with
wolves, brown and black bears
and the occasional jaguar.
But times have changed.
Ranchers have moved on to
raising cattle and leasing land
for hunting or eco-tourism, and
some have sold their land to
individuals who may not visit
the land and are termed
“absentee owners.”
In 2007 I founded a non-
profit organization, called
Balanced Ecology so I could
work directly with landowners
and other stakeholders on a
volunteer basis to try and estab-
lish an acceptable coexistence
between humans and cats. The
need for such work became
clear to me during the time I
was conducting work on the
local mountain lion population
in Guadalupe Mountains
National Park as part of my
doctoral dissertation at Texas
A&M University.
I was surprised to find out
that despite generations of
humans and cats sharing the
same land, there was a lack of
understanding of mountain
lion behavior and the impor-
tant benefits ranchers can gain
from having these predators on
their land.
When I discuss predators
with West Texans, I encounter
diverse attitudes towards the
issue. There are those who let
the lions be, unconcerned
10
Photo by Jeff Parker
Even captive mountain lions such as this one remain shy and elusive.
about their presence on their
land; there are those who want
them gone, for whom just the
sighting of one causes a surge
of activity for the killing of the
lone cat. And then there are
those who, in the past decade,
have started asking if having
mountain lions on their land
can actually benefit them and if
they can protect their livelihood
and yet coexist with the cats as
part of the Texas ecosystem.
It seems that most Texans
know little of the status of the
species in the state.
Some mistakenly believe
mountain lions are extinct,
while others believe, also mis-
takenly, that the population is
Cenizo
Second Quarter 2010
growing and expanding. The
majority of Texans believes
that mountain lions are or
should be protected, while oth-
ers, regardless of their feeling
towards the cats, are adamant
about keeping the government
out of their business, including
the protection of any species,
mountain lions included.
A common belief about
mountain lions is that if their
number is not controlled, they
will overpopulate, just like deer,
cattle or sheep. The fact is that
unlike deer and livestock, which
are “prey species” and require a
predator (mountain lion,
human) to control their num-
bers, predators are “self-regula-
tors.” This means that if you
have a resident adult mountain
lion on your land, that cat may
kill or chase away any invading
lion entering his or her territory
to compete for food, water or
shelter.
On the other hand, if you
kill that lion, you have immedi-
ately opened a territory to any
roaming cat. Under these cir-
cumstances, it is possible that
until a new lion establishes a
territory on that land and pro-
tects it, you may end up with
more lions per area than you
would have had had you just let
that resident adult live.
Possibly of more concern to
ranchers today is the presence
of feral hogs on their land, and
after learning that having
mountain lions around may
keep feral hogs at a lower num-
ber and distribution, some
landowners think twice before
killing the mountain lion
patrolling their land. In the
words of one landowner: “If
you can show me that, I’ll raise
those lions myself!”
Balanced Ecology is in the
process of identifying/recruit-
ing landowners who wish to
explore this further. With no
financial or labor cost to them,
we will survey their land for scat
and kill sights and will monitor
activity of lions, feral hogs and
other middle-sized predators,
such as coyotes and bobcats.
Some studies show that in the
presence of large predators,
such as mountain lions, the
number of coyotes and bobcats
is lower. Cattle raisers and those
who are interested in leasing