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WA Hound Hunting

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WAcoyotehunter:
Here's a list of reps that voted against the extension of the hound hunting pilot program.  Please, if your rep is on here, and you agree with the pilot program, send them an email and let them know!

Representatives Appleton, Cody, Dunshee, Goodman, Green, Hudgins, Hunt, Hunter, Kagi, Lantz, Liias, Loomis, McCoy, McIntire, Miloscia, Morrell, Morris, Nelson, Pedersen, Quall, Roberts, Rolfes, Santos, Schual-Berke, Seaquist, Simpson, Sommers, Sullivan, and Upthegrove

http://apps.leg.wa.gov/DistrictFinder/Default.aspx 

WAcoyotehunter:
Here's the type of emotion based 'scientists' we're up against.  The problem is that people actually believe they're doing a good thing protecting the 'rare' cats from all the cruel hunters.  They just don't know. 

from the Seattle Post Intelligencer
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/.....ion27.html

Protect, don't shoot, Northwest cougars
By JON NAIMON
GUEST COLUMNIST

Washington voters, recognizing the importance of cougars to Northwest ecosystems, have twice banned the use of dogs for recreational hunting.

Regardless, in 2004, the Washington Legislature approved a controversial three-year pilot project in five counties to kill cougars with the aid of dogs. House Bill 2438 now proposes to extend this "pilot" project for three more years and allow other counties to opt in.

Pilot projects are trials or experiments for testing an idea prior to investing in a full-blown operation. This pilot project has not delivered any improvements in public safety and runs counter to a significant body of scientific evidence.

The Department of Wildlife, ignoring the science, claimed that the pilot project's shooting of cougars -- whether or not they had ever been involved in a conflict -- would somehow make people safer.

However, even the department's published results from the pilot project conclude they were "not able to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between cougar population reductions and reduced human-cougar conflict." Perhaps the department was aware that the public does not support recreational hunting and felt a need to disguise the nature of the hunt along the lines of "scientific" whaling.

This issue takes on urgency because HB2438 is poised for consideration in the Senate. The Legislature should reject this thinly disguised sport hunting measure and ensure any new effort to encourage random killing of cougars is defeated.

In fact, there is a growing concern that this bill's idea of "recreationally" (randomly) killing cougars with hounds may actually increase conflicts between mountain lions and human interests. Indeed, states with the heaviest random removal of lions have had the highest incidence of attacks.

In 2005, a group of the most senior cougar researchers in the world created a wildlife management strategy document designed to capture what is known about cougars. The Cougar Management Guidelines, pointed out that the random shooting of mountain lions by recreational hunters -- either by boot or hound hunt -- did not accomplish the goal of reducing conflicts between cougars and humans.

A recent study out of Washington State University revealed cougar populations in the Northwest are decreasing even as sightings are increasing. The reasons for this relate to the building of second homes in prime cougar habitat as well as to the lack of education on ways to safely manage potential conflicts.

Mountain lions are an integral part of the Northwest ecology, and efforts to extirpate lions in the interest of public safety have a checkered past that is testament to the creativity of recreational hunters more than a deep concern for public welfare.

Perhaps the most insidious aspect of the proposed pilot project is that it can cause people to believe that randomly shooting cougars -- whether or not they have caused a conflict -- will in some way reduce the number of conflicts between humans and cougars. Not only could the bill encourage a false sense of security, it will also drain state resources that should be spent on conflict resolution methods that actually work.

State resources should instead be used to establish baseline cougar population metrics necessary to perform their keystone role in the Northwest's ecosystems we know and love. Wildlife habitat and linkages should be mapped and then protected.

Jon Naimon is the founder and president of Light Green Advisors, an environmental investment firm in Seattle. He is treasurer of the Mountain Lion Foundation. Information on the Living with Lions program, including the Cougar Management Guidelines, is available at mountainlion.org

WAcoyotehunter:
 The problem with the flower sniffing do gooders in Seattle is that they really want to help the wildlife. They get spoonfed a bunch of lies from a phoney organization like the "Mountain Lion Foundation" and they BELIEVE that they're helping the rare cats here.
They just don't know that there are lions everywhere and they don't need to be protected.

We need people that can articulate a reasonable response and not sound like a slack jawed redneck. We also need to understand that they are willing to kill all the animals from starvation, disease, and predation before they allow them to be taken by a hunter. It's illogical and wasteful, but they make decisions based on emotion, not logic or science.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE write your reps and let them know what you think. I live in NE Washington and have a pretty good bunch of reps, but they still hear from me EVERY time something that might effect my rights comes up.

sisu:
YaaaHooo none of my reps from the 7th Legislative District came up on the list but then I did not think they would. :IBCOOL: 8)

BTW WAcoyotehunter, I've seen wildlife biologists that hunt and fish recommend seasons, populations that need to be thinned, populations that need to be left alone etc. get crap because they don't sound the way a particular group wants them to sound even though they are using scientific data.

Ray:

--- Quote ---We need people that can articulate a reasonable response and not sound like a slack jawed redneck.
--- End quote ---

The best thing to do is have that someone craft the message as a template and then users can decide to either use it or not and even type in their own remarks.

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