Dear friend,

It’s not just Democrats and Republicans up for election in November. Animals are also on the ballot.

In recent elections, we’ve worked to ban greyhound racing in Florida and to stop extreme confinement of farm animals in California.

This November, in the great state of Colorado, we’re leading a coalition with 100 organizations to stop trophy hunting and commercial trapping of mountain lions, bobcats, and Canada lynxes. In just 75 days, 4.5 million voters there will decide the issue in an up-or-down vote.

It’s precisely because trophy hunters are so ruthless, and the killing of the animals so unwarranted, that this measure is so important.

Trophy hunters slay 500 or more lions in a single trophy hunting season! And they kill hundreds of bobcats to add to the body count, conducting the hound hunts in just the same way.

In just about every case, the trophy hunters let packs of dogs do the work. The hounds are fitted with transmitters on their collars to chase down, attack, and then corner a lion or a bobcat. If the animal can escape getting killed by the pack of frenzied dogs, he or she climbs a tree to seek refuge.

But, for the big cat, seeking safety in a tree is a fatal mistake.

A commercial hunting guide, leading a fee-paying “hunter,” follows the signal emitting from the dogs’ collars with GPS tracking equipment and finds the quary up in a tree, with no escape route.

Now there’s no place for the animal to go. The guide need only point to the animal and direct the trophy hunter to let an arrow or the ammunition fly.

It’s the moral and sporting equivalent of shooting a lion in a cage at a zoo.

It’s an act of appalling cruelty with a predetermined outcome. All done for no other reason but to take the head of a beautiful native cat.

Lions Play a Role in Reducing the Spread of Disease

As is often the case with needless and cruel killing of animals, there’s an unintended consequence. In this case, killing a lion, it turns out, creates havoc by enabling the spread of a deadly disease now afflicting Colorado’s deer and elk.

That disease, known as Chronic Wasting Disease, is a fatal neurological disease that has infected tens of thousands of deer and elk in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. It’s an incurable, infectious disease that eats away at the brains of the animals and produces “zombie” deer and elk.

Today we announced, at a virtual press conference for Colorado reporters, a new report, Big Cats as Nature’s Check Against Disease, which outlines how mountain lions preferentially prey on sick deer and elk, providing major ecological and economic benefits to Colorado. This report confirms the ability of native cats to cleanse deer and elk herds of the brain-wasting disease, which was first detected in Colorado in the late 1960s.

The report on the ecological benefits of lion predation is authored by Jim Keen, director of veterinary science at the Center for a Humane Economy and a former infectious disease researcher with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. As a USDA scientist, he deployed to respond to infectious disease outbreaks, including virulent Newcastle disease, Foot-and-Mouth disease, and African Swine Fever.

“These predators are often seen as competitors with hunters, but they appear to play a vital role in stemming more extreme spread of CWD,” noted Dr. Keen. “In short, if you want to protect hunting and other forms of wildlife-associated recreation associated with deer and elk, then protect mountain lions and allow them to deliver their gratis predator-cleansing services.”

I joined Dr. Keen at the press conference, along with Colonel Thomas Pool, our senior veterinarian. “Since all human efforts to control Chronic Wasting Disease in the past 50 years have failed, maintaining ecologically viable apex predator populations represents our best hope at controlling this very deadly and infectious disease,” noted Dr. Pool, who was the former chief of the U.S. Army Veterinary Command. “Ending trophy hunting of mountain lions in Colorado is critical to maintaining the billion-dollar economies in Colorado built around wildlife watching and other forms of outdoor recreation.

Ballots, not Bullets, in November

On so many levels, this trophy hunting of Colorado’s native cats is a disgrace.

It’s not just the use of packs of dogs with GPS collars to run down, attack, and corner cats so they can shoot the terrified animals from close range.

There’s also the mass orphaning of lion and bobcat kittens, left to die after their mothers are shot. State data shows that 47% of mountain lions killed last season were female.

And there’s the strangling or bludgeoning of bobcats and sending their fur to China for elites to adorn themselves in that country.

Nobody in the United States shoots a lion or a bobcat for need of food. High-tech hunting is an expensive form of cruelty. More broadly, Americans don’t eat cats and dogs. In fact, we have a national law that bans the selling of dog or cat meat for consumption.

That’s the American value system. Our legal and cultural standards make that plain.

Will you help us root out the ruthless cruelty of trophy hunting – and the disruption it causes to our ecosystem where lions limit the spread of disease in their prey populations?

Please support Animal Wellness Action so we can take on the toughest fights in the nation, like this one. Enable us to call out cruelty. And allow us to make the argument that by hurting animals, we see ill effects downstream, whether it’s the spread of disease or the connection to other forms of social violence.

Sincerely,

Wayne Pacelle President Animal Wellness Action