Animal rights and mammal protection

Animal Rights

Introduction to the ESA

According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law (1996) the Endangered Species Act (ESA) obligated the government to protect all animal and plant life threatened with extinction. Included in this category are endangered species, which is defined as any species "which is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range." Also protected are threatened species, which are defined as any species "which is likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range." The wide brush of this act is creating problems for those who are granting the rights to the animals. Unlike humans, who have been granted certain unalienable rights by their creator, (U.S. Bill of Rights) animals receive the rights they enjoy from the highest species on the earth, man.

By treating the subject of animal rights as a holy grail, activist groups are creating measurable harm for citizen groups, and communities across the nation. Because the actions of the federal government are significantly impacting the lives and safety of other animals, and humans, the subject of animal rights must be adjusted. The term 'means testing', and 'economic impact' has come to be applied to government actions which could have significant impact on the rights and well-being of American citizens. As a means of self-regulation, the government is requiring that new legislation be studied before its implementation, to ensure that the descried outcome will have no unseen impact. As the 'rights' of endangered animals are beginning to impede the activities, and in some cases the economic well-being of U.S. citizens, this project recommends studying the subject, and determining a framework on which a means testing structure could be assembled to measure economic impact of proposed animal rights declarations.

Seldom does the government, or activist groups behind government legislation act on the basis of altruistic motives. For reasons that are sometimes easily discernable, and at other times lost under the momentary political crisis, those who influence government legislative behavior often have a political, or cultural agenda all their own. Such is the case regarding the ESA. By protecting the 'rights' of individual animals, entire communities are being negatively affected. In some cases, community development is put on hold at the risk of disrupting the communities economic stability do to the presence of an endangered species.

For example, in a case in Klamath Falls, OR, farmers were prohibited from irrigating their fields, because of the presence of a protected fish in the local water supply. The irrigating would not have taken all the water, nor would their annual irrigation have destroyed the habitat of the fish. The ESA was invoked none the less under the second clause which is sufficiently broad so as to include 'threatened' species, those which would likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future.

April 6, 2001 is a day which will live in infamy, a day when those in the Klamath basin project and their descendants were stripped of all irrigation water," said third-generation farmer Marshall Staunton. "They became part of history as the first Bureau (of Reclamation) irrigators to completely lose an entire irrigation water supply. How they lost the water our nation promised can be summed up in three letters: 'E.S.A.' (Endangered Species Act)." (Souza, 2001)

Many War veterans were originally invited to the Klamath basin as homesteaders to raise families and farm, and they remain on family property today. The Reclamation Act of 1902, which encouraged America's veterans to participate in a lottery drawing for land in the west, brought them to their own piece of the American dream. Lands and water were made available to homesteaders, who in turn financed the construction and operation of the water works. However, the homeowners now are holding the federal government in contempt for reneging on this agreement in 2001 when the U.S. Department of Interior announced Klamath basin growers would receive no water this year due to drought conditions, and the protection of endangered species. Federal officials chose to increase lake levels to benefit the endangered Lost River sucker and the threatened Coho salmon.

Folks are starting to cry out. We are so angry and disgusted," Staunton said. "We are in complete despair and it is probable we are all going down. There are 1,400 martyrs here who are without water" as a result of the Coho salmon, and a sucker fish's 'rights.' (Souza, 2001) Those who live along the California-Oregon border fear a lack of water will be devastating to agriculture, schools, supermarkets, hardware stores and the entire community. "This is the first time in our nation's history that the Endangered Species Act has totally decimated thousands of jobs, businesses and heritage of such as widespread area. An expected economic loss of $300-to-$400 million in the economy will make it almost impossible for this area to survive," Staunton said. (Souza, 2001)

The Cougar's Plight

Similar situations are being experiences in the west in regard to the Western mountain lion, locally called the cougar. Mountain lions, also known as pumas, are solitary creatures, and highly mobile carnivores that inhabit low densities forests and roam enormous tracts in western North America. For decades, these characteristics made the cats difficult to research. According to Hansen, (1995) cougars once laid claim to the most extensive range of any land mammal in the Western Hemisphere. They once roamed from the Canadian Yukon to the South American Straits of Magellan. They can be found from sea level to 14,765 feet and in habitats as diverse as Northwest forests, Southwest deserts, and Florida's Everglades. While they are adaptable, the cougar is not invulnerable. Decades of habitat loss by increasing land development and persecution ov the lion by hunters have reduced the lion's North American range to the 12 western states, Mexico, and a limited territory in Canada. A small remnant community of Florida panthers is also on the endangered species list, inhabiting a small area in southern Florida.

The Florida panther is now found only in South Florida, primarily in Big Cypress Swamp. The 50 to 70 remaining big cats that have been identified are threatened by inbreeding and geographic isolation that leave them vulnerable to disease, congenital defects, and natural disasters. They are ranked among the most imperiled mammals in the world. Recently, in a bold experiment, state wildlife officials introduced closely related Texas cougar females into the region, hoping to enhance the panther's genetic variability and thereby ward off, at least for now, what many biologists saw as its impending extinction. (Natural History, 1999) Still, more cats are needed in more places to insure the Florida panther's survival. Kris Thoemke, director of NWF's Everglades Project Office, says the panthers' gene pool was somewhat enriched by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's import of 10 close cougar relatives from Texas two years ago. (Bogo and Motavalli, 1999) The move was controversial, but most observers say the panther would have disappeared without such intervention.

Further clouding the panthers' picture is their location in southwest Florida, one of the hottest building markets in the country, where their most significant predator is the speeding car. Panthers typically roam an area of 150 square miles in search of prey, mainly white-tailed deer, and that habitat is fast disappearing. "It doesn't take much development to disrupt them" says Thoemke. "The panther issue goes right to the heart of efforts to control sprawl and growth. And even when there are large habitat areas, if there's not enough food, the animals can't intermingle through wildlife corridors" (Bogo and Motavalli, 1999) Floridians have put the panther on their license plates, but to date have shown little inclination to stop the growth that is endangering their future.

According to the National Wildlife Federation, "Conserving wild cats is integral to protecting the West's wildlife heritage and to saving many of the pristine wild places they call home," says Elizabeth Murdock, chief author of the report and NWF's keep the Wild Alive campaign manager. (nwf.org, online)

Although cougars are typically considered to be numerous in the West, their numbers have been significantly reduced to a population which numbers only 50% of what it used to be at the turn of the century, and to territory that is less than 1/3 of its traditional habitat. The cougar has been virtually eliminated east of the Mississippi, and its fate in the West has been threatened by increasing loss and fragmentation of contiguous habitat. Cougars in Texas, the northern Rockies and southern California, for example, had disappeared from much of their former range until federal regulations began to protect them.

Habitat loss poses the single biggest threat to cougars, which require significant areas of wild land to establish home ranges and permit their young to disperse. A cougar's home range typically varies from 25 to 500 square miles for males, and up to 400 square miles for females. With the ever advancing human development of land for housing and businesses, the loss of traditional habitat is synonymous with the loss of animal population.

Losing these predators can tilt the ecological balance, and create other implications throughout the animal food chain. For example, when these top predators disappear from the landscape, other species that share their habitats can experience with overpopulation or population decline. First, overpopulation occurs as the predator-fewer environments encourages swift growth of species which typically would be targets of cougar hunting, such as other large mammals like sheep, coyotes, deer, etc. When the population of these animals grows too large, the result is a shortage of natural resources, such as food and adequate range area. Consequently, the prey species experience advancing death rates due to malnutrition, lack of adequate breeding, or disease spread due to the overcrowding.

Another problem for the cougar is the new suburban developments which shrink cougar habitat and create habitat islands, thus placing a greater number of cougars in close contact with humans. Mixing cougars and humans can be as dangerous as mixing gasoline and sparks. Sooner of later they encounter each other with disastrous consequences. Increasing the chances for cougar-human encounters is the source of ongoing debates over the policy of protecting the rights of this dangerous carnivore. When cougars become too populous on limited habitat, they become more aggressive in seeking new territory. In addition, cougars which are not hunted for over a period of time begin to loose their fear of mankind, thus doubly increasing the risk of contact between humans and the big cats. The result is harm to humans or the eventual destruction of cougars.

In Colorado, suburban expansion around Denver, Boulder and Colorado Springs continually creeps into cougar habitat, converting wild areas with settlements, and displacing cougars. In California, cougar populations on the outskirts of San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles are coping with human expansion, but while the cat is flexible, these pressures from ever-increasing urban areas puts cougar and the human populations at significant risk.

Cougars join several other imperiled wild cats that are featured in NWF's report. (nwf.org, online) Although many acres of wild lands have been degraded or destroyed in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, many important areas of wild habitat still support cats. The purpose of the ESA is to conserve these lands and thereby help North America's wild cats survive. In areas like southern California, and the Rocky Mountain regions of Colorado where native habitat has been so greatly reduced, conservation efforts must focus on preserving what little native land is left, and then protecting additional wilderness areas

During the 1960s and 1970s, many state wildlife departments reclassified the mountain lion from vermin to game animal, and thus gave the big cat a greater measure of protection. The setting aside of 700 million acres of public land and the passage of legislation such as the Wilderness Act have protected critical habitat and improved chances for the cat's survival. Currently, however, wildlife managers point to increased sightings, as well as increased attacks on livestock and people. Compared to the status of cougar populations at the turn of the century -- when most states still paid bounties -- the animals certainly seem to be resurgent in many parts of western North America. Many wildlife professionals believe the cougar is now making a comeback and due to this fact, the endangered species moniker not only relates to the big cat, but also to those who may be the feline's prey

The Problem of protection

Mountain-lion numbers have increased across the West," agrees cougar expert Kenney Logan. Logan and Linda Sweanor, his colleague and wife, are about to complete a 10-year lion study in the San Andres Mountains of southern New Mexico. "But it is important to understand that lions are recovering from depressed numbers, not just increasing. They are reestablishing populations in many areas. Man has been a dramatic mortality factor on cougar populations over the last 200 years, and now we are simply not killing as many. Game status and the elimination of state-supported bounty hunters helped." (Hansen, 1995)

Encounters between humans and mountain lions, including some attacks, are on the increase throughout the West. It was once rare, among even seasoned hikers and backpackers, to come in contact with a mountain lion in the wild. Not any more. Unlike wild grizzlies, wolves and panthers, who have not adapted to our sprawling presence, mountain lions are "a success story," says Howard Quigley, president of the Hornocker Wildlife Institute in Moscow, Idaho. "From Patagonia to British Columbia, mountain lions are the most successful large predator in the western hemisphere." (Lyons, 1996)

Maurice Hornocker, the founder of the Hornocker Wildlife Institute and, for the past three decades, the dean of mountain lion research, points to two reasons for their success in this age of vanishing ecosystems and species: The first, he says, is the resurgence of deer and elk, the main staple of any lion's diet. A second reason, says Hornocker, "is greater regulation of lion hunting. In Idaho, for example, upgrading mountain lions from 'vermin' to 'game' status helped tremendously."

We've come a long way from what biologist Paul Beier calls the "persecution era," when mountain lions were shot as casually and with the same vicious compunction as are coyotes today. In a 1991 study published in the Wildlife Sociology Bulletin, Beier documented every single mountain lion attack in the western U.S. And two western Canadian provinces since 1890. Beier's study found nine fatal attacks and 44 non-fatal attacks for those 100 years, a fraction of the number of people who were killed by dogs - or even bee stings - each year. (Lyons, 1996)

California, which has about 5,000 of the controversial felines, banned all mountain lion hunting in 1990 with the passage of Proposition 117. (Mountainlion.org, online) "Five years after shooting every mountain lion seen, of course there's been an increase in numbers," Beier says. Nonetheless, many hunters in California want to reinstate a mountain lion hunting season, trying, as in earlier times in the West, to portray the mountain lion as an aggressive stalker and vicious killer of humans.

Although a precise census of California's cougar population is lacking, the state's human population has tripled in the past 40 years. Many of these people have settled in the brushy country of the western Sierra Nevada and in the Coast Ranges which are both prime lion habitats. San Diego, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area all have adjacent mountain-lion populations. More people are exploring wilderness areas than ever before. This is one reason there are increasing numbers of cougar sightings, -- more people are entering their habitat.

Urban, residential, and agricultural development encroaches on cougar habitat throughout North America. In Colorado, the growing urban corridor that extends along the eastern shoulder of the Rocky Mountains, from Boulder south to Denver and Colorado Springs, presses in on the margins of cougar country, and the growing cougar population combined with an expanding human population its formula for dangerous encounters. People are simply moving to places where lions always have been and people never were.

Unlike early hunters and ranchers who probably shot cougars on sight, modern hikers who see a cougar in the wild consider themselves lucky and are more likely to report the sighting to a ranger. Additionally, when lions show up near populated areas and are subjected to the alarmist scrutiny of the media, the lions are quickly labeled a threat. A TYPICAL population is composed of resident adults, their cubs, and transients. Cubs usually disperse from their mother's home range sometime during their second year and become transients, wandering for a year or more in search of their own home range. In one Nevada population, males traveled up to 31 miles from their birth areas, while females averaged 18 miles. One young cougar marked in northern Wyoming appeared in northern Colorado, 300 miles from the original location. (Hansen, 1995)

Lions are most commonly found in areas with plentiful food, such as deer or sheep, and adequate cover. Such conditions exist not only in remote, primitive country but also remain intact in some in mountain subdivisions, urban fringes, and open space adjacent to housing projects. Due to this increased proximity and higher cougar numbers, attacks on humans have increased in the past 20 years. Last April, Barbara Schoener, a 40-year-old mother and marathoner, was killed by a cougar while running one morning. She was the first person killed by a mountain lion in California in 85 years. In January 1991, 18-year-old Scott Lancaster met a similar fate while running near his high school in Idaho Springs, Colorado. (Hansen, 1995)

Dr. Paul Beier, a wildlife ecologist at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, has documented 67 cougar attacks since 1890, 50 of them since 1970. Of the total, 12 attacks were fatal and eight of those occurred after 1970 -- three in the last four years, one each in Colorado, British Columbia, and California. Children were more likely victims than adults, with age's five to nine being the most attack-prone. (Hansen, 1995) A recent example is that of a hiker who was attacked by a mountain lion in the Rocky Mountain area. Andy Peterson, from Littleton, Co. must undergo a painful rabies vaccination after searchers armed with high-powered rifles failed Friday to track down the lion to test it for the deadly disease. The 24-year-old hiker suffered deep cuts on his forehead and scalp after the afternoon attack in Roxborough Park. Peterson's decision to fight back - he stabbed the lion in the head with a small knife and poked it in the eye with his thumb - probably saved his life. (Crowder and Vaughan, 1998)

Protected Species vs. Protected Species

Recently declared an endangered species, Sierra bighorn may never have been very numerous. Sierra bighorn inhabit the highest, craggiest recesses of the Sierra Nevada, rarely descending below 10,000 feet except in the harshest winter months. Short and stocky they are built for agility, not for speed. When danger threatens -- most often in the form of a mountain lion -- they run to the cliffs and move up as surely as if they had wings. Before they started appearing on Gold Rush menus, historical accounts suggest there were only about a thousand of them. Even deadlier than hungry miners were the domestic sheep that were brought to graze the high Sierra pastures and which passed on deadly respiratory bacteria to their country cousins. Though bighorn hunting was banned in 1878, by the end of the century few wild sheep were left in the high Sierra Nevada's (Rauber, 2001)

The reclusive mountain lions typically choose their prey from packs of mule deer. However, in the recent years, a few have developed a taste for mutton. And therein lies the problem: When an expanding cougar population in the 1980s turned its attention to the Sierra Nevada bighorn, it drove the sheep to the brink of extinction.

In the past, mountain lions have themselves been victims of ruthless predators. California paid bounties for dead lions until 1963, and trophy hunting wasn't banned until 1972.When Proposition 117 declared lions "specially protected," their expanding population created a threat for the Bighorn. The cougars are neither endangered nor even threatened at the time of the passage of 117, yet Californians didn't want to see them killed. Now the animal is threatening the bighorn's survival.