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Whose Lion? Choosing sides on California's Prop 197

By Joe Eaton

    Copyright 1996 Terrain, Northern California's Environmental
    Magazine. All Rights Reserved. Reprinting in other than
    electronic form without permission of the author or Terrain
    is strictly prohibited. Permission will likely be granted to
    non-profit or activist groups upon request.

If you weren't aware that emotions were running high over the initiative
on the March 26 California primary ballot to change the protected status
of the mountain lion, the number of italicized and bold-faced sentences
in the ballot pamphlet arguments would give you a clue. The actual
language of Proposition 197, a legislative initiative to amend the
California Wildlife Protection Act of 1990 (Proposition 117), is
bloodless enough. But the pro and con statements hit a more strident
rhetorical pitch. 

The pro-197 side paints an alarming picture of a booming lion population
that's killing off its natural prey base and menacing people, livestock,
and pets, while the State Department of Fish and Game stands by
helpless, its hands tied by the 1990 initiative. One horror follows
another: rural school kids can't play outdoors at recess or exit their
school bus alone; a lion attacks San Bernardino policemen in the parking
lot of a shopping mall; and -- in the best atrocity-story tradition --
"parts of five different puppies" are found in the stomach of a
marauding puma. 

The argument against the initiative describes a sinister alliance of gun
nuts and DFG bureaucrats, colluding to sneak the reinstatement of lion
hunting past voters in the guise of a public safety measure. The
heaviest fire is reserved for the out-of-state trophy hunters who, if
197 were to pass, would once again be free to fly to where trackers and
their radio-collared hounds have treed a nursing mother lion and blow
the unfortunate cat away at point-blank range, leaving its kittens to
starve. Puppy parts versus starving kittens: not a whole lot of middle
ground there. 

I've spent a good part of the past month picking through the text of
Prop 197 and its previous legislative incarnations, compiling newspaper
articles about the initiative and California mountain lion issues in
general, studying position papers and press releases from partisans on
both sides, and interviewing spokespeople for the California Wildlife
Protection Coalition and DFG. What I've found is more complex than I'd
anticipated. The public debate over 197 has a surreal quality, with the
hunting lobby (a few telling exceptions aside) manifesting a touchingly
altruistic concern for the welfare of schoolchildren and house pets, and
the opposing environmentalist and animal-rights groups focusing on key
words that don't appear in the text of the initiative. Proponents of 197
have played fast and loose with what little is known about lion
population trends and behavior in order to magnify the threat the
animals present, while the campaign against the measure has made
unverifiable assertions about what 197 would do and how much it would
cost. 

Then there's the ambiguous role of DFG. Has the agency, as anti-197
forces claim, dragged its feet in using available lion management
options in order to advance its own pro-sport-hunting agenda? Or is it
struggling, with limited resources, to address the often conflicting
demands of hunters, environmentalists, and anxious lion-country
residents? 

What follows is a look at mountain lion politics, and an attempt to
present what's reliably known about the animal itself and the
legislation that proposes its control. 

Chris Bolgiano's recently-published Mountain Lion: An Unnatural History
(Stackpole Books, 1995) is a good starting point for anyone interested
in the lore and biology of Felis concolor, a.k.a. cougar, puma, panther,
or catamount. Her book is part historic chronicle, part interviews with
lion hunters and biologists from Florida -- where the last remnant of
panthers holds out in the Everglades and Big Cypress -- to California.
Though mountain lions, like the rest of us, appear to behave differently
in different types of environments, some of what her informants found
may be usefully generalized to California. 

First, secretive and solitary creatures like the lion are notoriously
hard to census, so reliable baseline population figures are rare and
scientific assessments of the impact of hunting are even rarer. One Utah
study, in which cats matching the age and gender profile of a typical
hunting season's kills were trapped and relocated, appeared to show that
the population did not immediately rebound, calling into question the
idea that reduced competition enhances other lions' chances for
survival. 

Second, good cougar country tends to be filled to carrying capacity.
Lions are both highly territorial and, with minimal exception,
intolerant of other lions. In the White Sands, New Mexico area over half
the documented mountain lion deaths during the period of a recent study
were the result of attacks by other lions, including the killing of cubs
and unmated females by adult males.  Surviving cubs disperse after their
first year, sometimes traveling over 100 miles before they claim their
own territories; for these wandering adolescents, habitat corridors that
connect core range areas are crucial. Arizona biologist Harley Shaw, who
researched mountain lion predation on cattle, concluded that killing
lions only opened up new turf for dispersers. 

Third, lion attacks on humans have been vanishingly rare events. A
review of reports from 1890 to 1990 tallied ten fatalities and
forty-eight injury incidents for the US and Canada combined. More than
half of these attacks were recorded in British Columbia, where lion
hunting has been legal for years and lots of lions are killed annually. 

Finally, even when they are not hunted or otherwise officially
controlled, the cats remain vulnerable to other human activities; in
Southern California's Santa Ana Mountains, researcher Peter Beier found
that motor vehicles accounted for about a third of cougar mortality. 

For most of the long history of lion-human interaction in California, of
course, traffic wasn't an issue. Mountain lion bounties were offered as
far back as the days of the Spanish missions (a bull for each lion
carcass), but the bounty system wasn't formalized until 1907. Over
12,000 were killed for bounty from that time until 1963, an average of
200 per year. Re-classified from vermin to game animal in 1969, lions
were subject to regulated hunting from 1970 to 1972; a total of 123 were
killed in the two successive seasons. At the end of the 1971P72 season,
DFG ventured an estimate of 2400 mountain lions statewide. The state
legislature, lobbied by conservationists like Margaret Owings, enacted a
moratorium on hunting in 1971, with subsequent extensions. In 1990,
reacting in part to Governor George Deukmejian's veto of a further
moratorium, a petition drive placed Proposition 117 on the ballot. It
declared the lion a specially protected species -- an ad hoc category not
derived from existing endangered-species legislation -- and banned lion
hunting. In addition, it created a Habitat Conservation Fund that
earmarked $30 million per year to acquire wildlands used by mountain
lions, deer, and other species. 

In the years following the Proposition 117 victory, the California
cougar acquired a serious image problem. Lion-human encounters, some
with deadly consequences, appeared to be on the rise. In April 1994
Barbara Schoener, a vocational rehabilitation counselor from
Placerville, was killed by a puma while running alongside the American
River near the Placer County town of Cool.  Trackers later located and
dispatched the cat, convicted by forensic evidence. In December of the
same year, Iris Kenna was fatally attacked by a mountain lion while
birding at Rancho Cuyamaca State Park in San Diego County. Also in 1994,
a rabid lion attacked a dog, then turned on the dog's owners, in a
remote Mendocino County location; one had his thumb bitten off before he
stabbed the lion to death. 

In the same period, complaints of lion predation on domestic
animals, from dogs and cats to llamas and ostriches, climbed
dramatically.  DFG logged 322 such incidents in 1994; 121 cats were
killed that year on depredation permits. By contrast, there had been
193 depredation incidents and 70 kills in 1990. Puma sightings in
general rose from 59 in 1991 to over 300 in 1994. Not all were equally
credible. "I have people swear they have a mountain lion on their fence,
and I go down there and it's a five-pound house cat," said Game Warden
Mark Jeter of the Angeles National Forest. Golden retrievers were
frequently misidentified as cougars. "After years of chasing UFO's --
unidentified furry objects -- I now discount out of hand any sightings
of lions, even from professional biologists," researcher Harley Shaw
told Chris Bolgiano. "The human mind is a strange and wonderful thing,
and it's totally unreliable."

Nonetheless, enough sightings proved out to reinforce the sense that
pumas were ubiquitous. Lion habitat, it appeared, could be anywhere P
the bedroom suburbs of Los Angeles, the UC Santa Cruz or Stanford
campus, a Benicia refinery. A lion was observed strolling down a
residential street in the San Gabriel Valley with a poodle in its jaws.
Fillmore resident Robert Berrington, after saving his Labrador-pit bull
mix from a cougar, told the Los Angeles Times, "It's like moving Jeffrey
Dahmer or something next door to you, waiting for the next thing to
happen." 

Pundits in California and elsewhere questioned the wisdom of the voters"
verdict on Proposition 117. Trent Sanders, writing in the Christian
Science Monitor, likened Californians to villagers in India living in
fear of man-eating tigers (making the interesting assertion that the
increase in lion incidents could not be related to human expansion into
the lion's range, as "there has been almost no growth in California
since 1991.S) A widely-reprinted Los Angeles Times column decried
mountain lion protection as "environmental elitism." With the Schoener
and Kenna tragedies and their media reverberations, the time was ripe
for an attempt to amend 117. 

Enter State Senator Tim Leslie (R-Carnelian Bay) and his Senate Bill 28,
introduced March 1995. Leslie, who represents the district where
Schoener was killed, has been a beneficiary of National Rifle
Association and Gun Owners of California PAC money. (The latter
organization is an affiliate of Gun Owners of America, whose president
Larry Pratt was recently ousted from the Pat Buchanan campaign.)

The original bill would have rescinded the lion's protected status and
made it easier to repeal the Habitat Conservation Fund provisions of
117. While acknowledging a likely role for sport hunting as a management
option, Leslie played the public safety card: "We have a threat to women
and children... I want wildlife experts to be able to use their
knowledge, their science and their common sense." Leslie also touted his
bill as a moderate alternative to Assemblyman David Knowles' (R-Cameron
Park) measure calling for outright repeal of the 1990 initiative. SB28
immediately drew fire from aptly-named Assemblyman Richard Katz
(D-Panorama City), who charged: "This is not about management; this is
not about safety; this is a thinly veiled attempt to restore sport
hunting." Also in reaction, Assemblyman Dominic Cortese (D-San Jose)
introduced a third bill stressing public information, a hotline for lion
sightings, and expedited DFG response to problem lions. 

After initial rejection by the Senate Natural Resources and Wildlife
Committee, SB 28 was amended to have DFG prepare a lion management plan
addressing safety and livestock protection concerns; it then cleared the
committee in April.  Leslie hailed the vote as "a major victory for
attack victims, their families, and everyone in California who wants to
see some balance put back into a situation that is out of balance."
Further fine-tuning included changing the mountain lion's status from
specially protected species to game mammal; authorizing licensed
hunters, along with government agents and landowners, to "remove or
take" lions identified as imminent threats to public safety or to
livestock; and diverting an initial $100,000 per year from the Habitat
Conservation Fund to underwrite a DFG lion management plan, to be repaid
to the HCF from the proceeds of mountain lion hunting license sales. DFG
recommended boosting the annual appropriation to $750,000, authorizing
the use of snares to take problem lions, deleting the reference to
hunters as control agents, and dropping the repayment provision (on the
grounds that anticipated revenues would not even cover costs). Only the
last two proposals were put into the bill. 

Internal documents show that the NRA closely tracked the progress of the
bill, orchestrating shows of support at critical points like the
Assembly Appropriations Committee Hearings in August. The lower house
eventually took time out from its comic-opera struggle for control of
the Speakership to pass the bill, which went to Governor Pete Wilson in
September. 

When he signed the initiative measure in October, Wilson gave it a
ringing endorsement: "Families who enjoy our parks or live near
wilderness areas must take additional precautions to protect themselves.
However, it is our obligation to do whatever we can to increase the
margin of safety for citizens who might be threatened by lions. It is my
hope that active management of the mountain lion population will reduce
conflicts between cougars and people." Environmentalists countered that
hunting, not safety, was the real issue. "The reality is that mountain
lions are less of a public threat than lightning and bee stings," noted
Hans Hemann of the Sierra Club. "They're playing on people's fears and
exaggerating the threats of mountain lions." The Mountain Lion
Foundation's Mark Palmer charged that groups like the NRA and Safari
Club were Rusing public safety concerns to get trophy hunting." 

As it emerged from the legislative process, the actual language of the
March 26 ballot measure seems innocuous enough at first glance. Gone are
all references to hunting or game mammal status for the lion. The
"licensed hunter" of earlier versions is now a "designee." California
Journal summarized: 

Proposition 197 would allow the Legislature to change or repeal by
majority vote the protections given to mountain lions by Proposition
117. It would remove the lions" "specially protected" designation,
allowing the Fish and Game to manage the population as it does any other
species not officially rare, endangered or threatened -- potentially
opening the door to sport hunting [emphasis added].  Fish and Game must
further develop a management plan identifying areas where the lion
population has reached levels that endanger public safety. In its first
three years of operation, the measure would reallocate up to $250,000
yearly from the department's land-acquisition funds to the lion
management plan. The legislature may appropriate another $250,000
annually from other sources for public safety and education programs
related to mountain lions. 

Both sides of the 117 campaign clearly share the perception that DFG
will move to authorize sport hunting if the initiative passes. The
California Wildlife Protection Coalition (comprising the Mountain Lion
Foundation, the Planning & Conservation League, the Sierra Club, the
California Park Rangers Association, the California League of
Conservation Voters, and the Ark Trust) has made this a central point of
argument. The Mountain Lion Foundation's Bill Yeates notes that Senator
Leslie and the hunting lobby "have refused to support any public safety
bill that wouldn't also lift the ban on sport hunting" and claims that
the Coalition had to go to court in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt
to have the ballot statement acknowledge the potential for reinstatement
of lion hunting. 

The pro-197 side has been considerably less candid in its statements
for general public consumption. The ballot argument for 197, signed by
former DFG Director Jack Parnell and biologist Donald Neal, asks voters
to rectify the error they made by removing control of the mountain
lion from wildlife experts in 1990 and allow DFG to "protect not only
the mountain lion, but also the people, livestock, and pets from
inhumane slaughter." Apart from the threat to humans and puppies, they
claim that a burgeoning lion population has over-killed deer, elk and
bighorn herds. "Proposition 197 is a public safety measure," asserts
the NRA in a recent flyer, which proceeds to a bill of indictment
against the mountain lion (500,000 deer and $2 million worth of
livestock consumed in the last two years, endangered bighorn sheep at
serious risk, "unchecked population growth"  forcing lions to forage
in surburbia) and ends with a plea for scientific wildlife management
"to protect public safety and healthy species diversity."  A similar
broadside from the California Rifle and Pistol Association proclaims
that some game species Rare losing to lions faster than they can
reproduce" and that passage of 197 "will help restore the balance of
nature."  There is also a pitch for contributions to a pro-197
coalition, Californians for Balanced Wildlife Management.  However,
the unconcealed jubilation with which the rod and gun press has
greeted the prospect of amending 117 makes the hunting lobby's
expectations quite clear.  Some responses from hunters and their
publicists read like manifestos for a new front in the culture wars.
For other pro-hunting groups, like the California Houndsmen for
Conservation, there is an economic incentive: a single cougar hunt
may require an outlay of $2000 to $5000 to outfitters. 

DFG, officially neutral (see below), weighed in about the time 197 was
certified for the ballot with a special mountain lion issue of its
glossy publication Outdoor California, profusely illustrated with
photographs of snarling cats. The magazine contents drew on a study of
lion encounters since the 1972 hunting moratorium by Wildlife Management
Division Chief Terry Mansfield and mountain lion program coordinator
Steve Torres. Mansfield and Torres looked at several indicia of human
activity -- population growth, state park use, hunting and fishing
license sales -- and reported few obvious correlations with lion attacks
and pet-livestock depredation. Their conclusions as to overall
population trends were equivocal. "I wouldn't use the words 'population
explosion,'" Mansfield told the San Francisco Examiner. "But there are
parts of the state where the best evidence suggests there's more lions
than there were twenty years ago." His contribution to Outdoor
California also speculated that lions were expanding their range, if not
their numbers, in rural counties like Modoc, Lassen, Inyo and Mono. 
Mansfield expressed concern about the impact of lion predation on
bighorn sheep in the Sierra, and Torres, in a companion article, cited
lion kills as a limiting factor for the threatened Peninsular bighorn
population at Anza Borrego State Park. 

In a December memo warning employees against publicly supporting or
opposing 197, DFG provided a fact sheet to help with anticipated
questions. The document notes that while it has no position on the
measure, DFG "actively worked on the legislation to ensure that the
mandates of the bill would be consistent with the Department's
responsibilities and that it would be adequately funded." It says the
existing criteria for issuing depredation permits wouldn't be changed,
nor would the existing ban on the use of poison, leg-hold or metal-
jawed traps, and snares to take mountain lions. The fact sheet also
acknowledges that 197 would allow DFG to authorize hunting as a tool for
lion management, but only after preparing a management plan, holding
public hearings, and producing an environmental impact report. 

The Wildlife Protection Coalition operates out of a gray Victorian on K
Street, upstairs from a dentist's office. In their wood-paneled suite
decorated with mountain lion art, Paul Van Dyke, a veteran of the
California environmental wars, characterized 197 as a "monumental
deception being perpetrated on the voters of California," with DFG's
complicity. Van Dyke said the hunting lobby was closely involved in
drafting the measure and sanitizing its language based on focus-group
research. He feels DFG is disingenuous in stating that it is doing all
it can to protect the public from lions under the existing law, citing a
January 1995 memo from former Deputy Director Mark Baughman that urges a
more proactive stance and argues that existing law gives DFG more
management leeway than it uses. Van Dyke also described as typical of
DFG's passive approach an incident in which the agency was informed of
lion footprints near a school in Auburn, but didn't respond. 

Van Dyke feels that a bill recently introduced by State Senator Nick
Petris (D-Oakland) should expose the true interests of 197Us
supporters. Petris' Senate Bill 197 adds one brief sentence to 197Us
existing text: "Nothing in law legalizes the sport or trophy hunting of
mountain lions." 

Hearings on Petris' bill are slated for March; if passed, it will appear
on the ballot in November. If 197 is really not about sport hunting, Van
Dyke says, its backers should abandon it and support the Petris version. 

When I asked about campaign finances, Van Dyke responded that most of
his side's funding had come in small individual donations from all over
the state.  "Some of our strongest organizations are in San Diego and
Orange County," he commented. Larger amounts have come from the Humane
Society of the US and the ASPCA. Apart from Van Dyke, the No campaign
relies solely on volunteers.  He said that of the opposition"s $77,000
raised to date, about $20,000 had come from the Safari Club and the
California Rifle and Pistol Association. He suspects additional funds
are being held in reserve for a final media push and says an observer at
a Safari Club gathering heard that that group alone had banked $1
million to spend on the campaign. 

Van Dyke feels voters will reject 197 if they know sport hunting is
involved. He's encouraged by editorial support, most recently from the
San Francisco Chronicle.  RI think we're going to beat this," he
forecast, Rand it will be very embarrassing to Fish and Game to be shown
to have so abused the public trust to appease a special interest group." 

I found Steve Torres in the State Resources Building, a massive
glass-and-steel shoebox overshadowing the Italianate Stanford mansion
next door. Off the lobby, a State Parks gift store sells wildlife
tchatchkes, field and trail guides, and the works of Ed Abbey among
others. Upstairs in the Wildlife Management Division, endangered-species
posters share wall space with maps of deer hunting zones. A massive
bighorn skull shrouded in plastic reposes on the floor of Torres'
office. 

Torres began by describing his background in wildlife ecology and
biostatistics, his field experience with mountain lions, and his current
dual role as DFG's program coordinator for both mountain lion and
bighorn sheep management. He pointed out that the lion's protected
status did not carry with it any dedicated funds for research or
management. Sheep studies, like those for other game animals and for
endangered species, have a budget; lion studies do not. Torres feels
that the Department now faces an increased mandate for lion management
without a correspondingly increased allocation. Much of what we know
about lion behavior in California is a spinoff from deer and bighorn
research. 

The diversity of lion habitats, population trends, and behavior patterns
within California was a recurring theme of our discussion. "It would be
absurd to make statewide generalizations," Torres said. Much of the
state is suitable lion habitat, but population densities vary widely.
There appears to be a high level of lion activity in Humboldt and
Mendocino counties. In the Sierra Nevada, cats follow mule deer herds
downslope in winter and reach concentrations as high as eighteen per
hundred square miles -- standing-room-only in lion terms. The coastal
corridor from Monterey to Santa Barbara is another hot spot. In
contrast, numbers are declining in parts of Orange County due to habitat
loss and fragmentation. Overall, Torres said, it is not clear how much
the lion population is increasing. The logistics of finding and tracking
lions restrict researchers to ballpark estimates; 4000 to 6000 is a
current best guess. Torres noted that 40% of the lions killed on
depredation permits were subadults (two years old or younger), and there
was no evidence that aging lions with failing skills were increasingly
resorting to pets and livestock as prey. "I'm not sure you can determine
a typical depredating lion," Torres commented. The nature of the lion's
prey base also varies from region to region; mule deer populations are
experiencing a drought-related decline in some areas, stable or rising
in others.  Feral pigs, whose numbers are clearly on the increase, may
serve as an alternate prey source. DFG has taken active control measures
when lion predation threatens a vulnerable bighorn sheep population;
near Lee Vining, for example, a cougar was removed each year for three
years in succession to protect the sheep. 

Torres said it was unclear whether hunting would help resolve public
safety concerns. He was also unconvinced by arguments that hunting would
make matters worse. One study of directed lion removals in the Sierra
foothills found the local population rebounding, unlike the comparable
Utah studies. Hunting may simply not be a feasible option in some areas
where lion-human interaction has been high, such as the Southern
California urban fringe. His analysis of 20-year trends found that the
only measure of human activity positively correlating with lion
incidents was the number of housing starts. "The only factor that
explained livestock depredation was the amount of available lion
habitat," he continued. "However, when I correlated pet depredation, I
found that the only factor that showed any relation was the number of
new housing units. The counties showing this relation were also those
with public safety problems:  Orange, San Diego, Los Angeles,
Riverside." Pet depredation can serve as a surrogate variable for
potential danger to humans. 

Asked about the Auburn school incident, Torres said, "We don't have a
zero-tolerance-for-wildlife policy." He said the Department only
invokes the imminent threat criterion if a mountain lion's behavior is
atypical; if, for example, it is active in the daytime around human
habitations, or displays a lack of fear. Conceding that existing policy
was reactive, he explained that an ideal management program would
include research and conflict minimization components, with lion removal
as only one facet. RI hope people don't think a mountain lion program is
about killing lions," he said. Torres feels that much is expected of
DFG, not least by urbanites who have moved into the Sierra foothills and
are alarmed to discover that they have large carnivorous neighbors. Some
of their fears, he believes, are justified; somewhere a threshold of
human-lion interaction has been crossed. Better funding would help DFG
develop an appropriate management plan to deal with safety issues as
well as the long-term viability of California's mountain lions. "You
have to learn about mountain lions in order to protect important
habitats and movement corridors," he concluded.  "In the long run, the
biggest threat to the species is habitat loss and fragmentation." 

Had I expected to find a smoking lion gun, I would have been
disappointed. But it would be no surprise if, with Proposition 197 in
effect, DFG implemented a mountain lion management plan involving sport
hunting in a priority zone where a public safety problem could be
documented and hunting could be rationalized. This would likely be in
areas like Humboldt or Mono County, not Los Angeles or San Diego --
or even increasingly suburbanized Placer County.  DFG, despite
protestations that it is not just a "hook and bullet agency," has
historically been responsive to the concerns of hunters and their
political patrons.  But environmentalists, animal-rights activists, and
other parties would have input in the regulation-making process before a
lion-hunting policy was formalized, and should be prepared to take the
fight to that arena if 197 wins. 

That said, Proposition 197 remains a dubious piece of legislation. There
is no reason to believe that hunting will improve public safety. British
Columbia remains a case in point. DFG's Terry Mansfield, in legislative
testimony last April, stated it plainly: "Recreational hunting of
mountain lions would not be expected to prevent public safety threats
unless it involved removal of a significant portion of the mountain lion
population." Given the accuracy of lion-spotters" identifications,
hunting would also pose an unacceptable risk to the state's population
of golden retrievers. If the political will existed, proactive
management without a sport hunting component, as proposed in the Petris
bill, would be a realistic response to the imperatives of both safety
and conservation. 

However, the credibility of the environmental movement isn't served by
efforts to make a bad bill look worse. It's one thing to find
unsupported assertions about the mountain lion population having doubled
within recent years in pro-197 literature. (It depends on your working
definition of "recent." DFG's guesstimates suggest the population may
have doubled since the 1972 hunting moratorium. There is no support
whatsoever for the inference that lion numbers have doubled since
Proposition 117 went into effect in 1991.) But 197Us opponents have also
been guilty of a few stretches. A Wildlife Protection Coalition fact
sheet, available on the Sierra Club's World Wide Web site, states with
no discernible factual basis that 197 would "encourage the use of cruel
steel-jawed traps, leghold traps, and poisons." It also asserts that 197
would "steal $1.2 million from Proposition 117Us habitat protection
money for private hunting zones for the Safari Club." The genesis of
this figure is not readily apparent. At an annual $250,000 for the first
three years and an ensuing $100,000 per year, it would take eight years
for allocations from the Habitat Conservation Fund to mountain lion
management to equal $1.2 million. Paul Van Dyke was unable to account
for the fact sheet's figure. The Sierra Club's Yodeler comes up with
somewhat different but equally flawed mathematics, stating that 197
would divert $500,000 per year from the HCF. A release from the Bay Area
Open Space Council raises the specter of lion hunting in public parks,
based on an apparent misinterpretation of language in 197 prescribing
lion control by state employees in state parks. 

Honest errors, perhaps, but still disturbing -- and unnecessary. The
facts are indictment enough. 

--------------

This article appeared in the April 1996 issue of Terrain, Northern
California's Environmental Magazine. For information on subscriptions or
reprint rights, call (510)548-2220 or email ecologycntr@igc.apc.org.
Subscriptions are $35 / year.