SierraScape June - July 2006
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courtesy of Ted Heisel

It is no secret that many folks in Midwest state governments are a bit timid about mountain lions.

At what point, however, can they keep secret new policies that dictate how they will deal with their fear and ignorance?

The Missouri Conservation Commission recently removed the mountain lion from the state endangered species list and never told the public until after it was done. They claim they were correcting a "clerical error." They claim that the lions will receive the same protections that they always have.

One wonders then, why did they take an action at all?

One reason is they established a state policy that says mountain lions may not repopulate within state borders.

At what point can a government agency, especially the one charged with protecting wildlife, decide-on their own and in secret-that Missouri can do without its full complement of biodiversity? At what point can they just decide that mediocrity is OK? That our children and their children can do without the landscape we have come to know and love?

The international science group charged with monitoring the world's species has declared puma concolor as nearly threatened. The special subspecies in the Southeast, the Florida panther, is federally endangered.

The Department of Conservation does not even know if lions live in Missouri. They just know they once did and they might try to again. What if every state refused to give this magnificent species a chance to go home? At what point can state government workers just let a species slide into extinction?

Whether this action is illegal remains to be seen, but we at the Mountain Lion Foundation believe it is unethical and short-sighted.