Texas mountain lions – also known as cougars or pumas – have long been a fixture in the state. This year, for the first time, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has put restrictions on hunting Texas’ last big wildcat species.
Lisanne Petracca, a professor of carnivore ecology at the Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute at Texas A&M University Kingsville, spoke with Texas Standard about the new regulations, which went into effect in September.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: In the past, these big cats have been hunted year-round. What are these new restrictions about?
Lisanne Petracca: So the new restrictions, the mountain lion can still be hunted year-round; that is not changing. However, there is a ban on canned hunts and there is also now a 36-hour trapping standard such that lions cannot be held in a single trap for longer than that period.
What do you mean “canned hunts”?
Good question. So a canned hunt is when a mountain lion is captured and then released for the purpose of hunting and pursuing with hounds. So that is no longer permitted.
Tell us a little bit more about the Texas mountain lion. What does it eat? Where are they seen? Any chance you might run into them while you’re hiking in Big Bend?
So it is unlikely. Mountain lions, they’re kind of a rare, elusive large cat. Here in Texas, they’re found kind of in the South Texas brush country, in the western Hill Country, in the Trans-Pecos.
And they are found at pretty low densities. You’re unlikely to see them. And what we know so far is that they eat deer, they eat javelina, they eat feral hogs – and other things, too, like rodents and raccoons.
Well, indeed they do, because I was reading a story about a rancher in Fort Stockton who had to hunt down mountain lions because he said he lost close to 80 sheep over three months. How much of an issue are these big cats for Texas ranchers?
It’s an interesting question. Mountain lion absolutely do predate upon species of economic value, you know, such as deer here in South Texas, where I am. Also sheep. So that goes without saying that they can be a problem for ranchers.
However, lions do tend to avoid people. They do feed on lots of wild prey. But it is an interesting situation where, you know, if there are deer, if there are sheep, lions would predate upon them without discretion, whether it is wild or livestock.
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So what’s behind this 36-hour trapping standard? What is that about, and what is Texas Parks and Wildlife trying to achieve? Is there a concern about the survivability of the species or what?
So what’s interesting is, you know, Texas is the only state with a breeding population of lions that doesn’t currently have a management plan. So we don’t know much about lions. We do know that there is quite a bit of harvest and we don’t know how that harvest is affecting densities.
So the idea is that, you know, from the animal welfare perspective, let’s do what we can to ensure that minimum requirements are being followed. There are stories of lions being trapped and then left there for a long period of time. And so this is just one step towards achieving at the goal, kind of trapping standards.
Well, having said that, I was thinking about what that rancher in Fort Stockton was saying – he said he’s got 20,000 acres. And if you’re talking about checking traps every 36 hours, that turns checking traps into a full-time job for a lot of these folks who rely on this for their livelihood.
Yeah, exactly. And I think the idea is that if you are, you know, a full-time trapper, you would take equal consideration to look after your traps, assuming that you’re capturing the species of interest, that they’re not being kept in for unreasonable lengths of time. I think it’s just trying to uphold certain standards for animal welfare concerns.
How important are mountain lions to Texas’ ecology? Is there a way of describing that?
Sure. So mountain lions are the top predators in these South and West Texas landscapes. They are an important top-down regulator of prey populations.
And they serve as the apex predator, keeping our ungulate populations in check, you know, even at the low densities that they currently exist at.
