Game and Fish responds to outrage over actions

Department put down 3 mountain lions recently

The Arizona Game and Fish Department on Friday responded to outrage it caused over putting down three mountain lions who had fed on human remains near Tucson earlier in the week.

The remains were discovered late Monday by the Pima Canyon Trail in the Catalina Mountains, forcing the trail’s closure on Tuesday while officials investigated, according to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.

Officials did not believe the lions killed the person whose remains were found. An arrest was made in the case Friday.

The Arizona Game and Fish Department ultimately decided to put down the lions, starting an uproar from many members of the public.

Several Facebook users responded to The Republic’s post about the incident by saying eating meat, human or not, was the mountain lions’ instinct, while others said they didn’t understand why the animals couldn’t have been relocated away from homes.

Sprinkled in between outraged users were a few who defended the department, saying they wouldn’t have taken that action if it wasn’t absolutely necessary and that the mountain lions’ taste for human flesh could have prompted them to attack humans.

Jim DeVos, assistant director of wildlife management at the department, told The Republic in a Friday interview that the department did not make the

A photo of a mountain lion not believed to have been put down by Arizona Game and Fish Department officials.

ARIZONA GAME AND FISH DEPARTMENT

decision to put down the animals “cavalierly.”

“We had a number of meetings with folks that were directly involved with the scene before the decision was made, we spent a tremendous amount of time working to make sure that our actions were justified,” DeVos said. “The fact of the matter is that being responsible doesn’t always mean acquiescing to public comment.”

He said the decision was based in part on a policy that defines what “normal” and “aggressive” mountain lion behaviors are. The policy dates back to 2003, DeVos said, when the department put down a mountain lion and the public was similarly outraged.

In this incident, he said the mountain lions did not retreat when deputies approached the area to investigate the scene, which is not typical for the animals.

“A normal scenario is people walk up

to those lions and they’re gone,” he said. “You just don’t see mountain lions often in the wild because they’re fairly cryptic. Their survival strategy is, ‘if people are around, I’m going to slip out.’”

DeVos said it’s also not typical for mountain lions to feast on human meat.

“It’s not that they’re afraid, they just don’t know us as normal food items,” he said. “Would you rather eat something you’re wary of or a deer?”

Putting all of the circumstances together prompted the department to put the animals down.

“The behaviors that they demonstrated were sufficiently aggressive and sufficiently serious that we thought it would be an irresponsible action on a public department to translocate the animals,” DeVos said.

He said the department described the incident to a wildlife group in British Columbia, which he described as a leader in monitoring interactions between humans and mountain lions, and that the group felt the animals were likely to have repeat encounters with humans.

The department also determined that the adult lion was teaching the two other sub-adult lions “unacceptable behaviors,” DeVos said.

Ultimately, DeVos said the department was confident in the decision it reached but added that it never enjoys putting down animals, saying that everyone who works there is “in the business of conserving wildlife.”

“We trust that the reputation of the department as a national leader in wildlife conservation is considered when they judge our actions,” he said. “We had information the public did not, and had we not acted and these lions killed another human being, that would be a personal blow to every one of us involved in making that decision.”

“We … thought of having an unsuspecting person, a child, hiking Pima Canyon and being attacked and mauled or killed by a mountain lion. That was something that weighed very heavy in our decision.”