In the late ”60s or early ”70s while drift boating down the Klamath River, the man at the oars stated the fish cops did it, they put a moratorium on mountain lion hunting, which didn”t mean much to a 12-year-old at the time.
I was brought to Lake County deer hunting by my mentor in 1979 where I started my apprenticeship to become the outdoorsman I am today. I average about one mountain lion sighting every two or three years. I am sure they see me more often.
The years passed until 1990 when Prop 117 also passed, giving the mountain lion permanent special protection (everything is a felony, better read the law before taking a picture) also in Prop 117 was written in the Habitat Conservation Fund $30 million a year for 30 years and $20 million a year thereafter, to date $660 million has been spent on lion habitat.
Living along the north fork of Cache Creek surrounded by public land, other than wildland fires I”ve never seen any habitat burns on public lands. Mountain lions eat deer, and deer eat brush. If the brush gets too high it must be burned so the deer can eat, have babies, so the babies have babies and the lions have something to eat. But there are no burns and the deer are dying off. Also, the tule elk calves disappear soon after birth and that”s a shame. A few make it but nothing like it could be and there are pockets of deer and some private landowners at their own expense burn the brush to feed the few deer that remain.
If Lake County could get some of this $30 million a year to support annual burns in the back country many things would happen. Jobs, less opportunity for marijuana grows because of increased activity in the back country and annual controlled burns lessen the fuel load per-acre and decrease the danger of wildland fires.
The people who wrote Prop 117 wrote it in a way that it can”t be changed. The lions have not been hunted in more than 40 years. The deer, elk and bog horn sheep populations are dying off. The big cats are in our neighborhoods taking our pets and in some cases, people.
I wonder how many uninformed teachers or state parks employees voted yes on Prop 117 in 1990 only to lose their jobs to funding cuts today.
I have a question for our elected representatives: How many state parks could stay open, how many teachers could have kept their jobs for the $900 million you are spending on a cat that has not been hunted in 40 years? Prop 117 was bad when it passed, and it is worse now. We must make every dollar count. There are more important issues to be addressed than a cat with no problem at all except its food source. That we can fix.
The anti-everything crowd may think it is trendy to stop everything, but the end is famine for our wildlife. It is time to take an example from our Native American fathers to save our wildlife and burn the brush. Let Mother Earth live and she shall provide for all.
Joe G. Welz
Clearlake Oaks
