Mountain Lions in Washington need your help. This is a chance for all US residents, as well as people outside of the US, to speak up for North America’s big cat.

Via The Cougar Fund – a petition filed to ask Governor Inslee to reverse the Wildlife commission’s decision to increase the hunting quota for Cougars to tragic and unsustainable levels.

• In April 2015, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Commission raised the hunting quota for Cougars (Puma concolor) by 50 to 100 percent in areas of the state where wolves also live.
• The Commission made this decision without providing prior notice to the public, and without the benefit of a formal presentation of Cougar population dynamics by the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s own biologists.
• On June 30, animal welfare, conservation organizations filed a formal petition that asked the Commission to reverse this arbitrary decision.
• On August 21, the Commission voted 7 to 1 to keep its controversial decision in place, ignoring more than 1,300 citizens and several non-governmental organizations.

“According to 13 years of Washington–based, scientific research, the Commission’s April 2015 quotas will harm some Cougar populations and increase mortality to dependent cougar kittens. If a hunter kills a nursing female Cougar, her young kittens will die from starvation or dehydration. Additionally, when hunters remove the stable adult cougars from a population, it attracts young male cougars to these vacancies. The immigrating young males often times will kill the kittens from the previous male so they can sire their own. In the process, however, females defending their kittens are also frequently killed too. It’s not just the one Cougar in the hunter’s crosshairs who dies: hunting causes a harmful domino effect in Cougar populations.”

Please contact Governor Inslee using this easy to complete FORM and urge him to support the appeal and reverse the Commission’s ill-considered decision.

Image – The Cougar Fund – Facebook