Don’t look now, but
there may be a couple of keen eyes within a placid suburb or rural
Midwestern neighborhood. In fact, they might be up a tree.
That’s where Nebraska’s most recent mountain
lion was spotted earlier this year. The 100-pound animal was
lounging comfortably in a tree in South Sioux City, across the
Missouri River from Sioux City, when Elidia Valdivia noticed it.
“I really wasn’t scared,” she told the
Sioux City Journal. “It wasn’t growling or
anything. It was just lying there, kind of sleeping. Squirrels were
running around, and it just looked at them.”
The Nebraska
Game and Parks Commission was notified, a sniper called in and the
majestic male lion was taken down in accordance with the
agency’s policy: Any mountain lion in or close to urban areas
gets the death penalty.
For better or worse, mountain
lions are moving into the Midwest. In the past three years, cougars
have been spotted, captured or killed in or near the large cities
of Minneapolis, Kansas City and Omaha.
The lions are
migrating eastward because of human development pressures on the
Front Range of the Rockies and the increasing abundance of deer,
their favorite prey. Mountain lions once roamed most of the
continent, but were wiped out from the Midwest by the 20th century.
The sightings and shootings of lions in the past decade mark an end
to the animals’ century-long absence on the Plains. The Black
Hills, it is estimated, are home to more than 125 cougars, and it
is likely that some of those are fanning out over the Midwest, too.
Wildlife lovers find this a scintillating development. If
you think they’re delighted in Nebraska, imagine the wildlife
enthusiasts in North Dakota. That state may be getting mountain
lions from the south and west, gray wolves from the north and east
and black bears from the north.
“We have spent the last
50 years restoring the prey base of deer, turkey and other
wildlife, with some very good successes,” says Duane Hovorka,
director of the Nebraska Wildlife Federation. “I think it is just
logical to assume the predators will find the food and move in.
“We’re going to need public education about these
animals,” he adds, “or we’ll run into increasing conflicts.
The alternative is to shoot anything larger than a coyote, and that
doesn’t strike me as the best solution.”
Hovorka’s analysis has plenty of public support, but not
necessarily with the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission and similar
agencies in nearby states. Ironically, on its Web site, the
Nebraska commission exhorts “understanding and tolerance” of
mountain lions to “prevent us from repeating the mistake of
extirpating this magnificent feline from Nebraska once again.”
That sounds honorable, but the fact is that the Nebraska
Game and Parks Commission — as well as hunters, ranchers, law
enforcement officers and others who have encountered and killed
cougars in Nebraska, Iowa and elsewhere on the Plains — show
little tolerance for the animals. They often come off as
trigger-happy and heavy-handed.
Six mountain lions, a
protected species in Nebraska, have been killed in the state since
1991. One was hit by a train, but of the other five, only one was
killed in an urban area, and that animal posed no immediate threat.
The truth is that mountains lions are more scared of
humans than we are of them. It doesn’t help that old
stereotypes about predators still exist. Mountain lions were cast
as villains in old episodes of “Lassie” and “Bonanza,” and that
perspective hasn’t changed much. In a more recent example,
looming terrorists were depicted as a wolf pack in a George W. Bush
television commercial last year.
If animal-control
representatives are continuously seen as oppressive and paranoid by
some members of the public, those same people may refuse to contact
authorities when they see a mountain lion. They may fear that game
officials will come out and take the animal down. And history backs
them up.
One of the realities today is that many, many
more Americans — five or six times as many — would
rather watch wildlife than shoot it. That gap grows every year.
So, it makes sense to learn a little about coexisting
with some of the newest residents here in Nebraska and other
Midwestern states. You’d think we could find alternatives to
gunning down every mountain lion that crosses the border — or
that takes a five-minute break to relax in a neighborhood tree.
Pete Letheby is a contributor to Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org).
He lives and writes in Grand Island,
Nebraska.
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