California Lion Depredation

[AvidIndoorsman]

Does anyone have specific knowledge of CA lion Depredations

The state website says that depredation permits will be issued if certain criteria are met and provides a table with issued versus filed permits.

I'm curious does the California Department of Fish and Wildlife also kill some lions, or is all predator control done by private individuals. If CDFW also kills some lions, is that information published anywhere?

 

[Doublecluck]

Mountain Lions in California

Does not include lions killed by wardens as I understand it.

My friend is a CDFW warden and seemed like he tranquilized/killed a couple a year.

My cousin was issued a permit when his dog was eaten and half buried in his orchard on 7 acres. Lion never came back.

In 2018 the department changed its policy on depredation, before a permit will be issued the person must try to shoo the lion away by non lethal means at least twice. Something to that effect, Whatever the hell that means.

 

[AvidIndoorsman]

Mountain Lions in California

Does not include lions killed by wardens as I understand it.

My friend is a CDFW warden and seemed like he tranquilized/killed a couple a year.

My cousin was issued a permit when his dog was eaten and half buried in his orchard on 7 acres. Lion never came back.

In 2018 the department changed its policy on depredation, before a permit will be issued the person must try to shoo the lion away by non lethal means at least twice. Something to that effect, Whatever the hell that means.

Colorado kills approx 400 lions a year 10-20 by CPAW and the rest by "sportsman" I'm assuming that's a catch-all for hunters, depredation tags, etc.

California reports around 100 lions a year in depredation tags. I'm wondering if there are an additional 200 killed by the state, 10 killed by the state, 0?

 

[jlong17]

My cousin was able to get a depredation permit a few years back. A family of lions (large female and 3 juveniles) where caught multiple times killing his goats. He’d come home on several occasions to a total massacre. It was a lengthy process from what I remember. He had several conversations with the game warden as well as the area biologist, and cold hard evidence in the form of game camera footage. He came home from work one day and saw the cats had just killed yet another goat. He decided to sit over the goats body that night and within a few hours he smoked the big one from 60 yards out.
It’s crazy how many lions we have around here. I’ve had several sightings of that family of cats. As a matter of fact I even watched one of the juveniles (now a large dominant male in the area) stalk and give chase to a group of does while I was out deer hunting this year. It was pretty amazing to see, although it ruined my stalk on a buck I had been chasing.

 

[jlong17]

 

[Doublecluck]

Colorado kills approx 400 lions a year 10-20 by CPAW and the rest by "sportsman" I'm assuming that's a catch-all for hunters, depredation tags, etc.

California reports around 100 lions a year in depredation tags. I'm wondering if there are an additional 200 killed by the state, 10 killed by the state, 0?

It’s been like 20 years but I did a high school report on the subject and gathered tons of data. Talked to biologists etc. If I recall at the time the average over a 10 year period was something like 245 a year between permits and those taken by trappers/CDFW. Don’t quote me on that.

As I understand it the data on how many are taken by CDFW personnel is hard to obtain intentionally. Maybe their not even required to report it. I can’t recall.

At the time I did my report, I used lion population densities from Colorado to compare to and there were multiple areas through California where the estimated population Was greater than Colorado despite the fact those areas were also heavily developed and populated by people.

 

[jryoung]

CDFW is required to provide a report to the Commission annually on mountain lion depredation, that report is at the bottom of this page https://fgc.ca.gov/ in the "Reports to the Commission" section, it adds a little more color. I don't think the numbers of lions killed by wardens outside of depredation is very high at all.

In 2018 the department changed its policy on depredation, before a permit will be issued the person must try to shoo the lion away by non lethal means at least twice. Something to that effect, Whatever the hell that means.

That policy change is specifically related to the Santa Monica and Santa Ana population subsets which can be found here

https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=153021&inline

The Fish and Game Commission has received a petition to listed as endangered under the CA ESA.....more to come on that including whether or not the Commission actually has the authority to list. More to come on that, it should be an interesting one to follow.

More details on the history of depredation can be found with this article from Ryan Sabalow at the SacBee.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article182397016.html

 

[Bigjav]

The Fish and Game Commission has received a petition to listed as endangered under the CA ESA.....more to come on that including whether or not the Commission actually has the authority to list. More to come on that, it should be an interesting one to follow.

[/QUOTE]

That’s complete Bull... but I’m not the least bit surprised coming from the steaming pile of chit that is the California commission

 

[AvidIndoorsman]

Appreciate the info gentleman, I'm going to keep digging.

Also @jryoung and @Quackillr this is horrific... and to think we spend most of our time ragging on Montana's management of deer.

2 million to under 500,000... wow what a decline, despite the fact that CA hasn't harvested the number of deer that Colorado does annually since the 60's.

 

[AvidIndoorsman]

Apparently 64 lions were killed by cars in 2016

 

[jryoung]

It's a mess for sure, from the peak in the 60's through today we've added roughly 20M in population with untold acreage lost, and probably near trillions of driver miles on roads during that time. There's a professor at UC Davis that thinks deer collisions with vehicles could rival hunter take.

I've never gotten a great answer regarding the steep crash in the 60's-mid 70's, there was plenty of early seral forest land, but I do know that was also the era of massive suberb expansion.

I'm curious as to what the next decade holds (especially for the west slope Sierra) as we are increasing fire (wild/managed) back on the landscape, increasing mechanized management in the WUI, and with the massive tree die off and what it holds for deer.....outside highways and ranchettes limiting habitat.

 

[AvidIndoorsman]

There's a professor at UC Davis that thinks deer collisions with vehicles could rival hunter take.

I'm assuming that's the study I linked... pretty crazy.

Was reading about fire suppression and deer, while drinking my coffee. That is an interesting angle as well.

Hunting B2 has been on the list for a long time now, looking at the success rates it looks like that hunt will be a lot harder than I first assumed.

 

[jryoung]

Don't get too discouraged by success rates, we get two tags and many people buy two and barely hunt one tag.

I'm trying to get DFW to provide info on individual success rates since our denominator in the equation is a bit inflated.

 

[Doublecluck]

Appreciate the info gentleman, I'm going to keep digging.

Also @jryoung and @Quackillr this is horrific... and to think we spend most of our time ragging on Montana's management of deer.

2 million to under 500,000... wow what a decline, despite the fact that CA hasn't harvested the number of deer that Colorado does annually since the 60's.


View attachment 123222

Now you understand the perspective behind some of my opinions posted on the previous typical bash MT FWP threads. It could always get worse. Not saying what they do is right , not saying we shouldn’t try and make it better, but it certainly could be worse. Many don’t realize CA once had 2,000,000 deer.

I grew up hunting a zone that has a quota of 1500 tags. Just for the fun of it I looked and the most recent population estimate (2017) was around 2700 deer. To be fair I don’t think they sell all of the 1500 tags , but that’s the amount that could be sold. Not to mention the tags from 2 other zones are also valid in that zone. Average take in that zone was 120-170 animals per year and I usually killed two bucks a year. California really only manages x zones for quality hunts on public land. 2-10 years of points to draw.

I saw lions nearly every year where we hunted, but I would think development and even more so wildfire/forest management practices have the most responsibility in the decline.

 

[AvidIndoorsman]

Now you understand the perspective behind some of my opinions posted on the previous typical bash MT FWP threads.

Definitely.

 

[AvidIndoorsman]

@jryoung AND @Quackillr

I filed a public records request to California Department of wildlife requesting a spreadsheet of all recorded lion moralities due to either depredations by state employees or LEOs and/or by all other means eg. vehicle strike, poached, etc.

It looks like there are in-fact lions killed by the state that aren't included in the depredation spreadsheet on the state website. Apparently "Perceived Public Safety - Type Yellow" kills, "euthanized" cats that are captured then killed, or similar are not included in the depredation data.

It's not a substantial addition of cats... but at the same time these numbers are left out of the count.


It would not surprise me to learn a ton of mountain lions killed by local gov leos go unreported.

 

[jlong17]

@wllm1313 speaking of California mountain lions, did you catch this article?!?!

Mountain lion attacks 3-year-old boy at Orange County park

A 3-year-old boy was attacked by a mountain lion while hiking with his family at Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park in Lake Forest Monday afternoon, authorities said.

www.foxla.com