-Chris Spatz of COUGAR REWILDING sent a brief but powerful note to the South Dakota Game Officials asking them to rethink their draconian Puma hunting management paradigm which currently is drastically reducing the key easternmost breeding colony in the USA...........South Dakota Officials are single handily making it near impossible for enough "prospecting" Pumas to wander east and potentially recolonize other suitable habitat regions in the midwest and beyond..................Chris throws a no-nonsense "high and tight" fastball that reveals that it is deer that Game Officials should be reducing populations of,,,,,,,,,,,,not Pumas...............read the facts below and you will come away unsettled about how skewed and unscientific South Dakota's current Puma Management Plan is

From: Christopher Spatz [spatzcat61@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, December 15, 2013 8:41 AM
To: Rick Meril
Subject: Public safety risk from deer vs perceived risk from mountain lions

After the backhoe abomination in South Dakota, I have worked up some numbers and presented them to SD game officials and to the Rapid City Journal editors. 

Here it is:

Dear Editors,

Vehicle collisions with deer injure 30,000 and kill 150-200 people in the Unites States every year, causing $6 billion in auto-forest-residential-crop damage, medical and mitigation costs. South Dakota ranks 4th in the nation in deer vehicle collisions. A 2003 study documented 4,433 deer vehicle collisions in 35 eastern South Dakota counties alone.

A mountain lion has not been implicated in a human-related incident east of the Rockies since the 1850s. Averaging 4-6 incidents a year, three people have been killed by mountain lions in the US/Canada since 1998; none since 2008. During the same 15-year period, 450,000 have been injured in the United States and 3,000 have been killed in vehicle collisions with deer.

The chance of colliding with a deer in South Dakota is 1 in 65. The chance of being attacked by a mountain lion in the US/Canada is 1 in 70 million. As there have been no verified mountain lion attacks in South Dakota, the statistical risk is closer to 0. And as the author of this study of mountain lion encounters in urban western Washington State concludes, "the perceived level of risk from cougars in residential areas disproportionately exceeds actual risk." 

Given the far greater public safety risk from vehicle collisions with deer, why does South Dakota not have a termination policy for deer encountered within city limits, as it does for mountain lions?  

With compliments,