State Sen. Chambers wants to do away with mountain lion hunting season
Posted: Saturday, January 11, 2014 3:23 am
LINCOLN, Neb. – Sen. Ernie Chambers will work to repeal a different sort of death penalty this year in the Nebraska Legislature.
The Omaha senator introduced a bill Wednesday to end a new hunting season for mountain lions in Nebraska. He even said he will prioritize his mountain lion bill rather than one carried over from last year to repeal capital punishment.
It’s a measure of just how much Chambers despises cougar hunting, and a calculation that death penalty repeal is unlikely to advance in a 60-day session dominated by issues such as Medicaid expansion and prison reform.
“These are not hunters,” Chambers said. “This is butchery. It’s slaughter.”
State officials said they established the season this year to maintain or slightly decrease a small, breeding population of the big cats in the Pine Ridge of northwest Nebraska.
Sen. Al Davis of Hyannis, whose district includes a portion of the Pine Ridge, said about 90 percent of his constituents support the hunting season. And so does he.
“I think if Sen. Chambers lived with them in his backyard, he might feel differently,” Davis said. “We’re not eradicating them, we’re hunting them.”
Mountain lions were once eradicated from Nebraska, but migrating cats from surrounding states began showing up in the 1990s. Wildlife biologists have documented about 22 resident cougars in the Pine Ridge.
In 2012, lawmakers passed a bill giving the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission the authority to set a season. The agency heard strong opinions both for and against cougar hunting at public hearings.
“Part of what we’re trying to do is manage this balance between mountain lion populations and social acceptance,” Tim McCoy, the commission’s deputy director, said Wednesday.
The season opened Jan. 1, and the first two licensed hunters killed one male cougar apiece with the help of hunting dogs. The Pine Ridge season will resume in February and remain open through March or until hunters kill either two more males or one female mountain lion. Dogs, however, can’t be used for the rest of the season.
The commission also opened much of the rest of the state to year-round hunting of the big cats for those who buy a $15 permit. It did so because any cats encountered there are likely to be young males seeking new territories.
The Pine Ridge season must close after one female mountain lion is killed, even if the quota of four male cats has not yet been reached. So Chambers argued the season should have been called off in December when a young female cat was killed incidentally in a trapper’s snare in the Pine Ridge.
It showed the commission’s real motive was money rather than wildlife management, he said. The agency auctioned one of its Pine Ridge permits for $13,500.
McCoy responded by saying when the commission set quotas for the season, it took into account that a female would be killed incidentally before or during the season.
Chambers repeated a promise Wednesday that he will oppose new bills aimed at helping Game and Parks. And he upped the ante a bit by saying he will go after the agency’s budget if his repeal bill fails to pass.
His proposal, Legislative Bill 671, would repeal existing law that allows the killing of cougars that threaten livestock or people. He said he would restore that language if the hunting repeal succeeds.
The Omaha senator also introduced a bill Wednesday to repeal a 2012 measure allowing county governments to control prairie dog populations with poison.
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