Andy Rice is perhaps the last person you’d expect to care about mountain lions. A sheep herder near Boulder, Utah, he said that over the past decade, mountain lions — also called cougars — have killed about 100 of his sheep, costing him tens of thousands of dollars.
But Rice is deeply upset about the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources’ new approach to mountain lion management. Starting late last year, the state has been paying hunters and trappers to kill as many mountain lions as possible in six of the state’s 30 hunting units as part of a state-led study of how predator removal affects mule deer and bighorn sheep populations. This aggressive approach — which is scheduled to continue year-round through 2029 — is funded in part by sportsmen’s groups.
“My concern is that the government that I pay into, and the conservation organizations that I’ve trusted my whole life as a hunter in Utah, are willfully creating programs that are destructive to our communities,” Rice told High Country News.
Hunters and trappers began killing mountain lions in some units last October, according to Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) spokesperson Faith Jolley, and as of March 19, they had killed 45. Meanwhile, DWR biologists began capturing and collaring mule deer for monitoring last December.
“The use of the word ‘study’ appears to be hollow and disingenuous — rather this is an extermination campaign masquerading as science,” said Elliott Ross, a National Geographic explorer and photographer who lives in southern Utah near Rice.
“The use of the word ‘study’ appears to be hollow and disingenuous — rather this is an extermination campaign masquerading as science.”
WILDLIFE MANAGERS IN UTAH are under mounting pressure from state legislators to reduce the populations of mountain lions, bears and coyotes in the state. In 2020, the Legislature passed H.B. 125, which orders the DWR director to cull mountain lions when deer and elk populations fall below a given size. Jolley said the herds in the six units have been below target size for several years, though DWR wasn’t mandated to take action until the law went into effect in May 2025.
Though Utah has allowed recreational hunting of mountain lions for decades, hunters were generally limited to killing one per season. In 2023, in a last-minute amendment to a wildlife bill, the Legislature lifted seasons and bag limits on mountain lions. Now, anyone with a general hunting license can shoot, trap or snare mountain lions with no limits all year long.
The current study, formally known as Utah’s Watershed Restoration Initiative Predator Management Study, is a cooperative effort among scientists, sporting groups and the state wildlife agency. Brigham Young University biologists Brock McMillan and Randy Larsen, who study mule deer, have offered to lead the data analysis and assist with captures, data collection and other fieldwork, though a contract between the university and DWR has not been finalized.
This year, the study’s hunters and trappers are funded by two nonprofit hunting and conservation groups, the Utah Wild Sheep Foundation and Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife. While mule deer are the primary focus, the bighorn sheep that live in three of the six management units will also be studied.
Each organization contributed $150,000 to cover the project’s $300,000 cost for fiscal year 2026. The money pays for two predator-management specialists at the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food and one predator-management biologist at DWR. Additional funds will come from a federal tax on hunting equipment and state fees for big-game hunting permits.
Jolley said the state did not have access to a more detailed research proposal, and the Brigham Young University researchers declined to share their proposal since it isn’t finalized. The study’s total cost is hard to estimate, Jolley added, given that the state already monitors mule deer. But a project proposal submitted to DWR by the BYU researchers and obtained by High Country News estimates that it will cost a total of $1.29 million, with BYU contributing $281,604.
The state’s mountain lion removal effort is expected to last at least three years, according to the official project summary. It will continue through December 2029, with data analysis occurring in 2030 and 2031.
THOUGH ONLINE RECORDS SHOW that the DWR posted its project summary in October 2025, Rice and other concerned Utahns didn’t learn about it until December, when a recreational lion hunter’s dog walked into a snare and died, prompting the hunter to call the wildlife agency and then tell others what he’d learned. (The units are still open for recreational hunting, though the DWR has since posted some warnings about traps and snares.) “The fact that the public wasn’t given the opportunity to get involved or even comment on this is a big red flag to me,” said Denise Peterson, founder and director of Utah Mountain Lion Conservation, a nonprofit organization that encourages coexistence with mountain lions.
“Because this is a mandated action we are choosing to study — rather than a change in rule or management — there is no requirement to allow for public comment or input,” Jolley said, adding that public comment was allowed at December regional advisory council meetings and at the state wildlife board meeting in January.
Jolley said the removal is justified by 10 years of data on mule deer survival and mortality. If mountain lions kill more than 7% to 8% of a given population per year, “it’s difficult for mule deer populations to grow,” she wrote in an email. The study will be deemed effective, she said, if mule deer survival rates and numbers increase.
But at a January meeting of the DWR Wildlife Board, wildlife managers acknowledged that the majority of mule deer decline in the state is due to factors such as plant quality and habitat loss, rather than predation.
Rice and others worry that the killing is happening without any guardrails. Mountain lions are part of a healthy ecosystem, they note: Research in Colorado has shown they often hunt sick deer, which might help slow the spread of chronic wasting disease.
Critics also believe there should be a limit on the number of lions harvested to avoid pushing the population too low.
Mountain lion populations have been declining in Utah for years, though precise numbers remain unclear. The reclusive creatures are primarily nocturnal and prefer rugged habitat, so it’s hard — and costly — to count them. Jolley said that they have been declining in Utah since 2016, when the adult population was estimated to be 1,900. The most recent estimate, in 2024, was 1,100.
Courtesy of Utah Mountain Lion Conservation
According to Jolley, there are no limits on the number of lions that could be killed in the course of the study because the goal is to “remove as many cougars as possible.” But DWR is confident that, despite the removals, “there will always be a viable cougar population on those units,” Jolley wrote.
State wildlife managers won’t measure mountain lion populations directly, simply noting the number of lions killed. If they conclude that the big cats aren’t responsible for decreasing deer populations — if, say, malnutrition proves to be the problem instead — critics say that dozens of mountain lions will be dead anyway, and for no good reason.
DOES KILLING PREDATORS to save prey animals work? “It’s a question managers and scientists in the wildlife field have been asking for probably a century,” said David Stoner, an ecologist at Utah State University who is not involved in the DWR study.
Between 2017 and 2019, Colorado Parks and Wildlife killed mountain lions and black bears for the sake of mule deer in the Piceance Basin. Unlike Utah, however, Colorado placed a limit on bear and lion kills — less than 2% of the state’s total population — and avoided killing females with young or nursing. A 1992 study in the same area found that even after coyotes were eradicated from the basin, mule deer fawns still died from disease and starvation.
“What drives deer populations is largely weather. Other things factor in, but our wet and dry cycles in the West have the biggest proportional impact on the abundance of mule deer.”
Research published in 2010 by Mark Hurley, a now-retired Idaho Fish and Game wildlife research manager, found that removing mountain lions in Idaho had “no strong effect” on mule deer population growth. Rather, the severity of current and previous winters was the most important factor. Stoner has reached similar conclusions: “What drives deer populations is largely weather,” he said. “Other things factor in, but our wet and dry cycles in the West have the biggest proportional impact on the abundance of mule deer.”
Peterson is worried that the study will lead to more state-led mountain lion removals outside the six existing units. “It’s putting us on a very concerning trajectory,” she said. The project proposal hints at this, in fact, stating that “the results of this project can be directly applied to other units throughout Utah to improve management.”
Rice said he’s already seeing the effects of the project in Boulder, Utah. “You can’t kill your way out of problems,” Rice said. “You solve one problem and create another every single time.” In early March, one young lion was seen swiping a cat off a porch; another got stuck under an unsecured chicken coop and was euthanized by state wildlife officials. The Boulder hunting unit is the largest in the study area, and hunters and trappers hired by DWR have so far removed 15 mountain lions from it, including some females. “You kill mothers and have offspring that can’t take care of themselves,” Rice said. “We are literally seeing the consequences of it in real time.”
This story is part of High Country News’ Conservation Beyond Boundaries project, which is supported by the BAND Foundation.
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