Once hunting of lions in the San Gabriel’s came to an end, there was a major increase of the lion population. The outcome over the years has been disastrous, you will no longer find big horn sheep west of Azusa Canyon. The mountain lions have killed them off. There are large areas in the San Gabriel Mountains where the deer population has been eliminated by the mountain lions.

The only expansion of homes in to the foothills of Monrovia recently was the homes built on Gold Hill. As for the three homes on the Lower Clamshell Truck Trail, one of them has been there since the 1920’s and the other two were built i the 1940’s. So saying we have moved in to their territory doesn’t cut it.

How many dogs have been attacked or killed by mountain lions in Monrovia during the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s or 80’s ? None ?

Mountain lions may breed at any time of the year, and consequently litters may be born in any month. Summer is when most kittens are born, with usual litter sizes of two to four cubs born after an 82 to 98 day gestation period. Females breed every year.

Cubs remain with their mother for 15 to 22 months learning the skills necessary for survival. Juvenile males tend to disperse long distances compared to juvenile females. Mature females may be accompanied by cubs, but are normally not associated with other adult animals except for mating purposes. A mountain lion’s natural life span is approximately 12 years in the wild and up to 25 years in captivity.

Mountain lions are carnivores and prefer large game, such as: deer, bighorn sheep and elk. They will out of necessity, also feed on wild hogs, birds, raccoons, rodents, rabbits, wild sheep, and porcupines. When other sources are not available they will resort to consuming livestock and domestic animals if an opportunity presents itself.

Clearly if we have 3,000 lions giving birth to just three lion cubs in any given year, we are looking at huge numbers. Even if we calculate in a low mortality rate, the numbers are substantial. Out of a possible 9,000 newborn cubs, if even just half of them survive, it’s obvious, at least to me, that it won’t be long before the lion population is going to over-flow it’s current boundaries as more lions vie for a limited amount of food available to them.

Estimates on the actual numbers of mountain lions in California are nothing more than wild guesses, since studies such as those required to determine accurate mountain lion populations are costly, it has been many years since the funding has been made available.

These types of studies were normally funded by hunting licenses issued by the state, since hunters are no longer purchasing licenses and the wildlife preservation community has nothing to gain by determining the actual numbers of mountain lions, it’s really a crap shoot.

When we exam the needs of a mountain lion, we find that a single male will have a home range, which consists of at least a 100 square miles. Females generally use smaller areas–about twenty to sixty square miles. Along the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, where competition for habitat is intense, as many as ten adult lions occupy the same 100 square mile area.

The over crowding of a mountain lions territory can create some pretty intense competition simply for survival.

According to Tom Chester who’s website tracks “Mountain Lion Attacks On People in the U.S. and Canada”:

Mountain lion attacks on people apparently increased dramatically since 1986. For example, in California, there were two fatal attacks in 1890 and 1909, and then no further attacks for 77 years, until 1986. From 1986 through 1995, nine verified attacks occurred, an average rate of almost one per year.

Mountain lions and bears have always been scared of humans for thousands of years. It use to be if you were lucky to spot a mountain lion in the wild, you only saw the lion for a fraction of a second. Recently, especially in the foothills of Southern California, bears and lions seem not to fear humans any more. One theory that is floating around, people riding mountain bikes in the foothills. In the past ten years in Southern California, for some strange reason most of the mountain lion attacks on humans seemed to involve mountain bike riders. And for the first time in my life I hear of a human being attacked by coyotes ! And wasn’t this Monrovian 14 year old on a bike ?

.
> —–Original Message—–
> From: Will
> Sent: Friday, November 14, 2008 6:09 AM
> To: ghstrydr164@monroviacitywatch.com

> In a comment to your September post about the first mountain lion kill
> you
> wrote: “I’m tired of hearing that we moved into their land. This isn’t
> their land they were not alive when homes were built here, they were
> born much later. ”
>
> Certainly the animals being encountered today were not alive when the
> San Gabriel communities developed, but the point I can only hope you
> understand is that the species involved — from the top of the food
> chain to the bottom
> — were most certainly present and entirely unrestricted upon the
> lands where your houses now exist.
>
> Then you write: “We have a duty to keep ourselves, our families and
> neighbors safe and sooner or later we are going to have to start
> killing the animals that would kill us.
>
> I agree with you there about the duty we have. My only counterpoint is
> that the duty might not necessarily involve killing — especially if
> residents take responsibility to make their properties as inaccessible
> and unwelcoming to predators:
>
> – Do not feed these animals, Habituating wildlife to humans is a death
> sentence (and may have been the indirect cause of the cyclist getting
> bitten near Grand Avenue Park).
>
> – Keep pets indoors whenever possible and especially in the evening
> and early morning hours. Consider keeping your dogs in a fully
> enclosed kennel-type area if left alone for long periods of time during the day.
>
> – Empty outdoor food and water bowls whenever pets are not in need of them.
>
> – Make sure trash cans are secured and inaccessible.
>
> – Trim away any overgrowth that might harbor predators or animals they
> prey on.
>
> – Illuminate dark areas of yards with lighting.
>
> – Repair, replace or modify inadequate perimeter fencing to better
> prevent animal intrusions.
>
> You follow that up with: “We are the reason that they are so prolific
> because we provide an easy living for them that allows them to thrive
> in numbers that were unheard of a few hundred years ago.”
>
> While I can appreciate that people who are careless about their pets
> and their homes’ perimeters contribute to the so called “easy living”
> for predators (and the animals they might prey upon such as raccoons,
> skunks, opossums, rodents) I’d like to know where you get your
> information about the so-called unheard of numbers they exist in today
> because it goes contrary to the facts. That you contend there has been
> some sort of general predatory population explosion is an exaggerated
> rationalization for their destruction at best. There are simply not
> more coyotes and mountain lions in existence today then there were this time last century.
>
> Lastly, I can appreciate and empathize with your apprehension and you
> are certainly correct in calling for greater awareness. But vigilance
> and vigilantism are two different things.

Will

On Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 10:27 AM, Cyrus wrote:
> Hi Will,
>
> Thanks for your input.
>
> While I respect your right to an opinion I do not share it. The
> suggestions you make for co-existing with wildlife are outdated and no
> longer offer a viable solution to the problem we are now facing.
>
> Taking away their food source in the interface areas has created new
> problems. Bears breaking into houses and moving farther into the
> urban areas, they’re here and they are evolving into behavior patterns
> that no longer fit standard behavior and solutions.
>
> Are their better ways of dealing with them, Yes, but Fish and Game has
> to come into the 21st century. I believe birth control is a more
> humane solution. Spaying and neutering programs for Bears, Mountain
> Lions, Coyotes and Deer that have been Urbanized would be a good
> start. That would help break the learning cycle of only knowing how
> to exist in the urban areas and reduce the population to a level that
> could be sustained in the natural environment.
>
> Keep working on a solution that is viable and doesn’t depend on the
> masses doing the right thing, because we can be assured that the
> masses will not do the right thing.
>
> Cyrus

From: Will
Sent: Friday, November 14, 2008 11:27 AM
To: cyrus@cyruskemp.com
Subject: Re: [] Will

Thanks for the reply Cyrus and I’m glad to see you’re willing to at least begrudgingly accept wildlife’s place with us and entertain other predator deterrent options beyond their wholesale slaughter.

But I must say that’s an ambitious and costly “21st Century” program you’ve outlined in hopes of eliminating habituated wildlife. Plus it’s funny how you have no faith in the masses, but you would readily take their tax dollars to fund the various state and federal wildlife departments so that they can staff and implement trap-snip-release programs in such a broad scope against what is in reality such a small segment of the wildlife population.

While it might result in some incorrigible predators from reproducing and sending future generations into your backyard, what’s to keep ever-desperate first-timer wildlife from also coming out of the hills and into your neighborhoods whose boundaries we continue to push into their shrinking habitat? The answer is nothing will keep them away — especially as we get closer to them and doubly so if you insist on denying the “out-dated” notion of residents taking personal responsibility and taking preventative steps to discontinue providing a food supply for predators along with ready access to it.

You may consider my solution prehistoric, but at least it’s far more doable on a house-by-house, block-by-block level than the trust you’re apparently willing to place in government departments to undertake a proposed operation that would ultimately prove expensive, inefficient and ineffective.

Will

Cyrus wrote:

I offered that solution for those who do not condone hunting. My solution would be the solution that is taking place in many areas and that is hunting. Many areas are issuing a certain amount of tags each year.

Back in the 60s’ you could hunt all animals in the Angeles Forest year round except deer that had a season and required a tag. Everything else was considered varmint including lion, bear, bobcat, fox, coyote and others. There were no problems with lions, bear or coyote in the interface then and the species still survived, just in fewer numbers and avoided contact with humans.

The solution you suggest has been in place for decades and everyone who lives in the interface areas are aware of the rules but it is not working and it is to late to make it work now. The animals have been taught to survive in the interface areas and farther down in the cities and many are third generation or more and could not survive in the wild any longer.

Case in point: there was a female bear with two cubs until around six weeks ago when her body was found just off the road not sure how she died. The cubs started coming around all hours of the day and getting in the trash and then began trying to break into houses. This last week there is now only one cub, no one seems to know what happened to the other one but chances are it is also dead. The last cub probably will not survive much longer and if it does it will have to be killed because it will soon be large enough to break into houses. Another thing I have seen the last few years is that the Garbage Can bears no longer hibernate, probably because they have a regular year-round food supply.

Do I want Fish and Game involved, No, but that is the only solution at this point besides hunting. As far as cost goes they are wasting more tax money pursuing the present course of action that isn’t effective and we are losing ground.. It is reactive not proactive.

More encounters, attacks and killing of humans and animals.

We are only putting off the inevitable anyway, because some people can’t bring themselves to do the best thing and that is to allow hunting or birth control. Instead we will wait until there is no choice but wholesale slaughter

Cyrus