By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Mountain lion-human encounters are said to be rare, but when they happen, they are also sensational and in the aftermath of a cougar attack which left an 8-year-old girl with “minor” injuries over the weekend in Washington State’s Olympia National Park, one former state lawmaker told TGM via email it’s a good idea to be armed.
Former State Rep. Brian Blake sponsored a hound training bill four years ago—hunting mountain lions with hounds was outlawed by citizen initiative in 1996—but he lamented it still has not been implemented.
Aware of the Saturday attack, Blake wrote, “At this point, folks need to be armed and prepared.”
It has been legal to carry firearms in national parks since 2010, though an advisory from the National Park Service notes, “In areas administered by the National Park Service, an individual can possess a firearm if that individual is not otherwise prohibited by law from possessing the firearm and if the possession of the firearm complies with the laws of the state where the park area is located. 54 U.S.C. 104906.”
A supplemental note at the end of the advisory adds, “Visitors should not consider firearms as protection from wildlife.”
The youngster was camping with her family on the park’s north side at Lake Angeles. The big cat fled when the girl’s mother began screaming, according to published reports.
Rare though they might be, with increasing use of forest lands, not just national parks, by more people, it is inevitable human-predator encounters will increase.
Indeed, the late Fenton Roskelly, longtime outdoor writer whose byline graced the pages of the Spokane Spokesman-Review, wrote back in November 1996 following passage of Initiative 655, “Department biologists believe that bear and cougar populations will increase gradually as the result of passage of Initiative 655. That happened after Oregon voters passed a law similar to 655… For Washington, controlling the problem animals will be more expensive than it’s been, especially when bear and cougar populations are up three or four years from now. The department either will have to maintain hound packs or contract with hound owners to capture the animals. Department officials think they may be forced to maintain hound packs because, they suspect, many hound owners will sell their dogs. Additional cost to the taxpayers will be about $1 million a year.”
It’s not the first high-profile mountain lion incident in the Evergreen State. Five years ago, two mountain bikers were attacked on a forest road north of North Bend, about 35 miles east of Seattle. One of the men was killed and the other seriously injured. The offending cat was subsequently killed by wildlife agents.
In California, a female jogger was killed by a mountain lion on a popular trail in El Dorado County in 1994. It had been the first fatal cougar attack in the state since 1909. California banned mountain lion hunting several years ago.
Ten years later, a cougar attacked a bicyclist in Orange County and although she survived, rescuers searching the area discovered the body of another bicycle rider, near his bike. While they weren’t certain he had been killed by the cat, one official told reporters at the time, “It’s pretty obvious that an animal was involved.” According to the Deseret News, which reported the incident, at that time there had been 13 mountain lion attacks in the state over the previous 114 years, five of which were fatal.
