Mountain lions have been in the news a lot in the last year. Maybe it's the drought, or the ever-spreading suburbs encroaching on the cats' habitat and the animals' confusion faced with civilization. A month ago I saw a family of deer — a doe and two fawns — trotting anxiously down a residential street in the foothills below UC Santa Cruz, and thought, if deer are here, can cougars be far behind?

There was the young puma trapped in a culvert in the city limits, evidently lost; it was tranquilized and relocated, only to be run over and killed later trying to cross Highway 17. The Santa Cruz County Land Trust has secured the acreage to build a wildlife underpass near Laurel Curve to make such crossings safer for everyone, but this particular puma seems to have been poorly adapted and perhaps doomed anyway.

There was a cougar found in a parking structure in Mountain View, and another spotted at Neary Lagoon in Santa Cruz, others in Aptos, and perhaps most unsettling of all, the one who pounced on a 6-year-old boy walking just a few yards ahead of his family near a winery in Cupertino. The boy survived, but the lion was tracked and executed by human authorities with zero tolerance for such aggressive animal behavior.

Surely the pouncing puma was traumatized enough being chased away by his prey's guardians to avoid people altogether in the future — avoidance of humans is instinctive for such creatures — but human law prevailed and the cat was killed.

Los Gatos was named for bobcats; cougars too are indigenous residents of the Santa Cruz Mountains ecosystem. I personally think they should have license to hunt freely if potential prey should wander into their territory. Pumas are part of the natural landscape, and a most magnificent part indeed — top of the food chain, next to humans — and in my opinion have every right to follow their own instincts.
Not long ago I was walking alone in the coastal hills aware that, who knows, it was a long shot, but I might meet a mountain lion. Cognizant of the privilege of such a sighting, I figured that if attacked I would fight back, trying to scare it off, but also realized that if the beast was hungry enough it might make a meal of me. And I thought what an honor it would be to be eaten by a mountain lion. There are certainly plenty of worse ways to die.

Recently I read that UCSC wildlife biologists have been trapping, training and tracking lions in a research project designed to better understand their behavior. The scientists have been putting high-tech collars on the cats that record their movements. These collars, in the photographs released, look rather clunky and uncomfortable, and I expect the poor cougars clamped into them are not happy to be involuntarily subject to such manipulative study, even by the most well-intentioned people.
Self-defense aside, I propose a moratorium on all such intrusive human management of mountain lions. Let the big cats run free and let people roam the hills at their own risk. Pumas are among the most beautiful, dignified, awe-inspiring creatures we share this habitat with, and they deserve to be here, on their own terms, more than we do.

Stephen Kessler is a longtime resident of Santa Cruz and the surrounding mountains.

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