Thoughts and reflections from OreCat Director Jayne Miller after attending Oregon’s “That Darn Cat! Cougar Meeting” hosted by Rep Sherrie Sprenger, R-Scio.

August 19, 2010

Well, its been a long night.  I’m glad to be back on top of this mountain, in the dark, all alone and with a resident cougar.  Well, ok, I have two dogs that bark at him.  I left this paradise vacation on top of a mountain in the middle of 900 acres of BLM timber and the comfort of a multimillion dollar cabin; to go to Lebanon Oregon and sit with about 100 angry folks who booed me.  But some did come up later and apologized.  That’s ok, I lived with a brother who use to beat up my Raggedy Ann dolls and hang my barbies by their necks from the ceiling lights.   If you can survive that you can learn to live with anything.  After dropping my husband off at the farm, I did get followed for over an hour back to my trial head and then when the vehicle saw how far out they were, flashed their lights at me and left.  It felt safe to get back to my cougar.  This was the first of many meetings to try and get more cougars killed here in Oregon .  It was Representative Sherrie Sprenger, R-Scio, who said she wanted to hear from the public on the issue of cougars and she did a wonderful job conducting tonight’s meeting, however, she sounded in favor of killing them and not much else.  She was afraid her 13 year old son would be attacked by a cougar, although she had not seen one on her property.  This all happened because six sheep were killed on a farm in the area in 2 months…by six cougar.  So I blogged the news sites and then went to the program to speak on the behalf of the cougar and better management plans.

This is what I experienced:  First of all, ODFW is not referenced in any of the news articles I saw, nor did they mention this incident at the meeting.  They simply said nothing about it.  So, I really do not know if this is true or what happened.  I do know this is not the pattern of cougars.  I do know they can be raised in captivity and released.  I do know that if resident cougars are killed, more cougars will come into the territory.  Its’ called a “sink.” What ever happened, I can guarantee you humans played a big role in it happening.  I saw Cindy and her son at the meeting.  It was her farm this all happened on.  To me she seemed afraid to talk to anyone about this and seemed very afraid in general and appeared to just want to get the night over with.  An older man (I missed his name) spoke on her behalf stating she was too shy to talk and he sounded like Hitler as he ranted about killing cougar.  I heard alot of cougar killing stories that were not confirmed by ODFW or their representatives at the meeting.  There was a great deal of anger, story telling, discord and fear in the voices of the parties who spoke.  No one wanted to listen to reason.  They never mentioned the hounds men, but they sure did exploit children as a reason to kill cougar.  That was the worst part of it.   No one wanted to hear that a child had not been killed by a cougar here in Oregon or California for that matter.  California has more people, more livestock, and more cougar than any State in the Union and only 16 people have been attacked by cougar since 1890 to 2007.  5 were fatal, 2 from rabies (1909).  You can look this up on California ‘s Fish and Game website.

Instead they said, “We don’t care!  These are predators and must be killed.  I don’t care if cougars ever exist again!”  And they certainly bashed folks living in Portland and Eugene as not having a right to vote on issues they believe to be their own.  I liked the idea of getting more Oregonians involved with the cost of caring for their wilderness.  I have a good plan about that I hope to share with folks soon!  The hunters claimed they owned the wilderness, and, if I do recall, they owned our ranch every hunting season and we got alot of fences and gates torn down.  I never got to tell them that Oregon belongs to all of us and without any cougars, your children and children’s children will have a much less quality life. I know that is hard to understand, but it is called Tropic Cascadia and is not a good thing to try and live with.  With only a couple of minutes, I had no time to say that your farm feeds the city folks and they in turn supply you with income, and their taxes supply funds to maintain your roads, schools, and infrastructure to sustain your communities.  We are all networked by the streams and rivers that feed our watersheds and the air that is cleaned and made breathable by the forests that sustain us.  I never got to mention that this all happens because of cougars.  Because of their very existence, we exist, the honey bee exists, better deer populations exist and much more.  We Native Americans have known this for thousands of years.  I don’t think folks there tonight wanted to understand the Tropic Cascadia issues vast portions of American and our National Parks are devastated from.  Or the amazing reversals when cougar are reintroduced to these devastated areas.  I don’t think they would understand genetic extinction, anymore than I can understand why ODFW still thinks, after several years of killing more cougar than were killed before M18;  that we have 6000 cougar.  The math does not add up.

Even Jane Goodall has written about Oregon’s devastatingly poor cougar management plan.  Even the Smithsonian has documented this!  We do not have 6000 cougar, we do not have an accurate program that counts them to really know how many we have.   Our numbers are wrong.  We do have a society ill equipped to deal well with cougar.  We as Oregonians lack humanitarian and knowledgeable skills to do so, leaving us to soon be number 37 and then you can say goodbye to OUR wilderness, our quality of water, our vast forests and much much more.  It is my sincerest hope we can remove the polarization, the anger, the fear and the disrespect;  to learn to work together and preserve this great cat.  I am a cattle ranchers daughter, my life has been vested here in Oregon and our agriculture communities all my life and for the rest of my life.  I hear the losses, I’ve experienced them too.  And I know the truth.  I also know from experience that cougars are not that great a threat or that scary.  What was scary to hear and watch was the irrational fear about them.  I wish I could see more of this kind of action against childhood drug issues instead of being wasted on cougars.  From the bottom of my heart I know the that lack of understanding and education causes fear and fear is paralyzing,  and wrong decisions are made from fear. Lets put Oregon on the map by developing a cougar management plan that truly is responsible and is none lethal.  Lets remember that we are all united by the very fact we share the same soil, same water, same air and cities cannot exist without the country and ever more so vis versa.

Kindest regards

Jayne Miller

Fore more information about Jayne and the Oregon Cougar Action Team, visit www.OreCat.org