OLYMPIA – Earlier this week, a bill requiring the Fish and Wildlife Commission to adopt rules to establish seasons for hunting cougar with the aid of dogs was passed by the Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources.
House Bill 1124, sponsored by the committee chair, Rep. Brian Blake, would make permanent the state’s pilot program on using hounds to hunt cougars as a way to resolve several public policy and safety issues.
“The use of dogs is the best tool we have for managing cougar populations in our state,” said Blake, an Aberdeen Democrat. “What we learned from the pilot project was that hound hunting was the best biological tool to manage the cougar population. The big cats are not killed at random; they are treed to determine their sex and age to then decide if it makes sense to put them down or not.”
In 1996 Washington state voters passed Initiative 655, banning the use of hounds to hunt cougars. Since then, local governments and citizens expressed growing concerns with personal safety; livestock losses; attacks on pets; and the impacts of cougars on other wildlife populations. In 1995, the year before the hound-hunting ban, cougar-related complaints were about 200; the first year the ban was in place the complaints more than doubled and in 2000, the number rose to over 900.
To address the problem, in 2004 the state started a pilot program allowing hound-hunting of cougars in five counties in northeast Washington (Chelan, Okanogan, Ferry, Stevens, and Pend Oreille), where the state’s cougar populations are the highest. Cougar complaints in these areas have dropped to nearly a quarter of what they were before the pilot program was in place. Due to its success in controlling cougar population in Washington, the program was extended twice and, in 2008, Klickitat County opted into the program.
Under Blake’s bill, the Commission must ensure viable cougar population levels and make use of the best available science on cougar management and conservation. The hunting rules must be limited to game management units where the use of dogs is necessary to conserve and manage cougar populations, as well as protect public safety and private property.
The measure would also prohibit hunters participating in the pilot seasons from exchanging payment to a commercial enterprise for the use of dogs.