The California Fish and Game Commission will make their final decision to list mountain lions as a threatened species in the Santa Cruz mountains on Feb. 11-12. If approved, it will deploy a recovery plan to increase mountain lion populations that have already reached their carrying capacity, according to Dr. Winston Vickers at UC Davis.
This is a sixfold overflow. The scariest part is not the attacks; the animals to be listed have an extreme lack of biodiversity and genetic diversity.
For those unfamiliar, biodiversity is nature’s way of providing wild animals with cellular resistance for disease.
This is exactly like a human receiving a flu vaccination.
Past results from wild animals lacking biodiversity include Nipah Hendra Viruses, the Plague, S.A.R.S., salmonella, HIV (AIDS), COVID-19, rabies and Lyme Disease. The U.S. Department of Agriculture states the cause is poor management and poor conservation practices.
The Mountain Lion Foundation’s website practically serves as a signed confession to all of this. First stating they have been saving and protecting mountain lions since 1986, the site continues on with how mountain lions are in the worst shape ever due to severe lack of biodiversity, a cellular destruction caused by poor management and poor decision making.
Had the right decisions been made, we would not be in this situation.
Mountain Lion Foundation is asking for the same solution that has failed miserably in the past—protection laws without habitat restoration.
No longer can officials blame increased sightings and attacks by labeling us as ignorant people encroaching on habitat.
What’s going on today is not humans moving into the forest, but an unchecked unmanaged population of lions overflowing into our neighborhoods.
You can blame doorbell cameras for the increase in sightings, but you can’t blame them on the carcasses left in my neighbors’ yards. Where were these activists when our governor signed AB 130 and SB 131 to bypass environmental reviews to fast track 2.5 million homes to be built by 2030?
They should have been the loudest voice protesting this.
All for the minimal benefits mountain lions provide for the ecosystem.
They should not be called ecosystem engineers, a name given to the grizzly bear for its immense physical labor that shaped California.
The mountain lion can never achieve this. It moves through the landscape like a ghost; the grizzly bear moved through it like a bulldozer.
Please call or email your representatives to vote NO on listing mountain lions as threatened before our health and safety get signed away.
The Fish and Game Commission’s email address is fg*@****ca.gov.
Philip Salgado
Morgan Hill
