CPW lion management aims for stability in numbers | Western Colorado

New Colorado Parks and Wildlife management measures seek to maintain healthy levels of lions while addressing concerns that can arise at the local level.

A West Slope Lion Management Plan adopted by the Wildlife Commission late last year “provides a science-based framework for maintaining a stable lion population across the entire West Slope for the foreseeable future,” agency spokesman Travis Duncan said in an emailed response to questions for this story.

The West Slope plan consolidates and revises 13 older plans into an overarching one managing lions at a larger scale “more biologically appropriate for a far-ranging species that regularly moves across the state and beyond,” Duncan said.

The agency believes about 3,800-4,400 independent/mature lions are living in Colorado.

The West Slope plan makes an exception to the population stability goal in western Colorado in the case of a newly created 1,800-square-mile Glenwood Springs Special Management Area, where numbers are to be reduced for safety because of a high number of lion sightings in places such as neighborhoods.

The new plan also includes a controversial provision allowing the use of electronic calls, albeit on a limited basis. Hunters already could use mouth calls to attract lions to them. Electronic calls can make use of speakers to draw a lion away from the hunter, and also can be used to imitate the sounds of various prey.

Use has drawn concerns from critics about the ethical concept of fair chase. Duncan said electronic calls will provide “an additional tool for lion harvest under very specific conditions and rationale.”

In January, the Wildlife Commission allowed use of electronic calls in the Glenwood management area and parts of southwest Colorado near the Utah border. Parks and Wildlife views the calls as helpful in achieving goals where factors might limit other tools, such as in the case of hunting on small acreages not conducive to using hounds.

Haley Stewart, program manager for wildlife protection for the Humane Society of the United States, said the new West Slope plan has some positive changes. These include the more regionalized management approach and a goal of taking into account total mortality levels for lions, not just because of hunting, but factors such as being struck by vehicles or removed for predation on livestock.

There also are “some science-based limits on hunting of adult female mountain lions, so that’s great,” she said.

But she believes some hunting quotas are likely based on overestimates of populations, making the quotas larger than lions can reasonably sustain. Stewart said such overestimates can result from extrapolating data from small areas over short times to estimate longer-term, more regional population numbers.

“That’s just not how mountain lion populations work,” said Stewart, who said more longer-term, regional studies are needed.

Stewart called Parks and Wildlife’s decision to allow the calls “a disgrace.”

Stewart’s group also opposes the goal of boosting removal of lions by hunting in the Glenwood Springs area. She says there already is heavy lion hunting there, and allowing more will result in social chaos in lion populations.

Killing off territorial lions will bring in dispersing young lions more likely to be involved in conflicts with humans and livestock, she said.

Duncan said the Glenwood-area plan includes not just increased harvest opportunities but heightened educational measures and a focus on addressing individual lions in conflicts with humans. The plan “will be evaluated under an adaptive management approach to assess success of conflict reduction,” he said.

Stewart would like Parks and Wildlife to consider nonlethal approaches first to address conflicts, from more education, to using devices that use light or sound on agricultural properties to deter livestock attacks.

The agency has implemented its new approaches amid a larger, ongoing debate over whether lions should be hunted for sport.

“We believe lions need to be protected against trophy hunting, an archaic principle Coloradans don’t support,” Stewart said.

While lion hunters in Colorado must make use of the meat, Stewart said for the most part the primary reason hunters pursue lions is for trophy hunting. She said hunting isn’t needed to manage lion populations, because the territorial animals limit their own numbers just fine.

Said Duncan, “It is possible to have robust and stable populations of wild animal populations while also allowing hunting.”

He said some people reference the “California system,” implying that elimination of hunting in 1990 is why managers there don’t have more human-wildlife conflicts.

Rather than regulated hunting, it has regulations allowing for the take of depredating lions, Duncan said.

“Today, three to four times as many lions are removed in California on landowner depredation permits due to conflict than are taken by landowners or federal damage agents in Colorado. In California’s case, it shifted the effort from sportspersons who buy licenses to help fund the agency’s conservation efforts to employees whose time and efforts actually cost the agency, redirecting funding from other important species conservation programs,” Duncan said.

He said lions are managed by hunting, public education and hazing.

“Using all management options tailored to each situation, community or region of the state will allow CPW to provide robust lion populations for viewing, ecological function and hunting opportunity while also addressing public safety and human-lion conflicts,” he said.