The forest is not full of mountain lions. It takes many square miles of forest to support one family of lions. A lion travels an amazing distance finding its food.
A hungry lion will kill an adult human if it can leap from a tree onto the person”s back in a surprise attack. However, it would much rather find an easier entree, such as a ground squirrel, a child or a dog.
The literature on lions attributes the lion”s value to the lion keeping the deer population under control, a feigned justification as a slight modification of the game laws would keep the deer population down as well as create employment for many as hunters for meat companies exploiting the new source of meat.
And the often-proffered reason for allowing lions to roam free ? that lions have a right to live ? is out of place because the lion is a creature of nature, and there are no ethics in nature. The discipline relating to right and wrong is an invention of man and no other creature on Earth that I know about is so intelligent as to have advanced it.
In any case, the invention of ethics would embarrass the lions, whose diet is entirely carnivorous. The lions must kill to live and their principal diet is deer.
I wonder how many out there have ever seen (as I have) the soulful expression in the big brown eyes of a doe whose fawn has just been killed by highway traffic and whose grief impels her to approach a human being in desperate appeal. It”s a rough go to buffalo. I almost cried.
Dean Sparks
Lucerne
