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Lion In Wait

Say Martha Stewart's going to jail and people start talking. But talk about Arizona Game and Fish planning to shoot mountain lions in Tucson's Sabino Canyon and people reach for their torches and pitchforks. In my four years of producing newscasts in Tucson, I have never seen an evironmental or animal rights issue draw so much debate. And it all comes down to one question: do we really have to kill 'em?

Game and Fish says there's no other solution. These cats will eat you for lunch. It's only a matter of time before somebody gets attacked.

Moving them won't work, we're told. They're territorial. They can't adapt. They can't be put into a zoo. They can't be rehabilitated.

Yeah, but at least they'll still be alive.

Conservation is part of Game and Fish's mission. It's disappointing it can't live with half a loaf. Maybe the cougars can't survive a move, but at least it's a more natural way to go. It's a solution the animal-rights groups can live with, even if the lions can't.

Game and Fish says it put a five-day hold on the lion hunt so it could listen and understand the issues. But it didn't change its mind. The absolute refusal of this agency, funded by your tax money, to even consider testing an alternative solution on one lion is galling. Just move one. If that lion survives, the experts have some explaining to do. If it dies, well, the animal-rights crowd got what it asked for.

This is not bowing to pressure from some group of wackos. This is forcing a public agency to be accountable to the public. Technically, it owns the lions in the eyes of the law, but don't we as citizens own Game and Fish, too?