Nevada’s Mountain Lions: Wildlife Management or Science? Not So Much
End the Incidental Trapping of Nevada’s Mountain Lions
Nevada has over 4,000 animal species, mammals, reptiles, birds, rodents, of which the Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW) has management authority over about 900 of them. For such an arid state, such wildlife diversity is remarkable.
NDOW’s mission statement says, in part, that it is to “…protect, conserve, manage and restore wildlife and its habitat for the aesthetic, scientific, educational, recreational and economic benefits to citizens of Nevada and the United States…”
Do those lofty sentiments always hold true? Is biodiversity of primary importance in Nevada? Not always.
The truth is that NDOW and the Nevada Board of Wildlife Commissioners (NBWC) sometimes pick winners and losers. Nevada’s mountain lions, coyotes, and ravens are three big losers. The terms apex species and keystone species are used to describe wildlife species which have been shown to exert a disproportionate beneficial impact on the integrity of our ecosystems.
The mountain lion is one such species. You’d think this status would warrant greater protections. Yet the opposite is true.
Although Nevada’s mountain lions have been categorized as a game species for decades, they are subject to hunting year-round, 24×7. No other game species in Nevada faces such risk year-round. NBWC pays Wildlife Services, the federal predator control program, to kill lions to protect or enhance bighorn sheep and mule deer herds without convincing evidence that lions are in any way a limiting factor for either ungulate species.
Mountain lions are frequently caught in bobcat traps and suffer grievous injury and death even though it is illegal to trap the animal in Nevada. Despite knowing about incidental lion trapping for many years, neither NDOW nor NBWC has done anything to address the issue despite accumulating an impressive amount of data and photos (Project 36, Project LIFT) to document it. Agency staff has examined more than 4,000 lion kills, primarily by hunters, in the past 20 years.
About one of every six or seven lions brought for examination shows abnormalities (toes, paws, teeth) consistent with prior trap or snare encounters. A University of Nevada, Reno Ph.D. student conducting research for her degree found that many of her collared lion subjects were having adverse experiences with traps. She published a peer-reviewed paper in 2018 in the Journal of Wildlife Management, a highly regarded professional publication, drawing attention to this troubling issue.
Due to the chronic puzzling years-long inattention to this issue by NDOW and NBWC, the Nevada Wildlife Alliance, WildEarthGuardians and the Mountain Lion Foundation, on behalf of their Nevada supporters, have filed a petition with NBWC requesting modifications to trapping regulations to reduce the unnecessary, mostly preventable incidental trapping injuries so well documented by the agency itself. It is the petitioner’s view that incidental trapping of mountain lions in Nevada has no basis or support from science and has nothing to do with principles of modern wildlife management.
So, if incidental trapping of Nevada’s mountain lions isn’t science or good wildlife management, what is it? One reasonable notion is that the years-long inattention by NDOW and NBWC is, perhaps, a form of benign neglect; accepting collateral damage from trappers on the assumption that damaged, injured or dead lions present less risk to mule deer and bighorns and hoping the public won’t notice. If readers cannot access the petition via the link above, it may be viewed at: nvwildlifealliance.org in the Blog Section. A posting, Project 36, available on the same website provides an earlier view of the same issue.
All support for our petition is welcome. Please let NDOW and NBWC know of your concerns. The commission’s next meeting is January 24th, and if you live in Nevada and can attend to show your support for mountain lions, please do so.
About the author
A member of Wildlife for All’s advisory committee, Don Molde is a 50-year Reno resident, retired psychiatrist, co-founder of Nevada Wildlife Alliance, former board member of Defenders of Wildlife, and former board member of the Nevada Humane Society. He has been active in wildlife advocacy for 45 years.