Wildlife group condemns Bend police cougar kill

A Eugene-based wildlife advocacy group on Monday condemned the actions of Bend police for shooting and killing a cougar near the summit of Pilot Butte over the weekend.

Here’s the rest of the statement from Predator Defense, in full. (Also note this incident is the topic of our new KTVZ.COM Poll, which you can find halfway down the right side of our home page.):

Predator Defense condemns the actions of the Bend police for killing a cougar at Pilot Butte State Park this weekend.

There was no incident between the animal and the public. The cougar did not approach or threaten anyone. There were other options available but instead the police chose to shoot the cougar.

“Once again, authorities grossly overreacted – there was no need to kill this animal,” said Brooks Fahy, executive director of Predator Defense. “What was needed was a calm, humane and logical approach, not a bullet.”

“Closing the trails at the park was the smart thing to do, and that is all that was needed. Given space and time the cougar would have moved on, the incident would have been simply and safely resolved. Hazing the cougar is another option to negatively associate town visits.”

“The people of Bend and all Oregonians should be outraged at this extreme reaction. This animal posed no threat, even according to state’s bear and cougar public safety law. He did not have to die.” Fahy said.

Cougars are elusive and secretive, and they rarely pose any threat to people. There has never been a documented cougar attack on a person in Oregon’s history.

More cougars are killed today than ever before in Oregon’s history – compare the current approximate annual mortality of 500 to the 200 average in the early ‘90s.

“Oregon’s cougar management is solely focused on increasing cougar mortality and they’ve succeeded, but that may not be the best strategy for safety and preventing conflict”, said George Wuerthner, Bend resident and nationally known ecologist and wildlife biologist.

“Ironically, hammering the cougar population may well be causing increased conflicts between people and cougars,” he said.

“That’s exactly the results reported in published peer reviewed field research from Washington State Carnivore Laboratory: areas with heavily hunted cougar populations typically have more young male cats, the age group most often found close to people and livestock, creating conflicts.”

Oregon’s policy of always responding to cougar and bear presence by killing the animal and justifying that by saying it is the only safe outcome is simply untrue.

This practice is not followed in other states such as California and Washington where animals are relocated or given space and time to move off on their own.

The argument that relocating the animal creates disruption with animals in the area is groundless because the ‘relocation’ is simply returning the animal to the perimeter of town where he came from.

The group also has a video “press kit” online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsJCeROdEqI&sns=em