Bill targets limits on cougar, bear hunting.

Byline: David Steves The Register-Guard

CORRECTION (ran 5/28/2005): An article on Page A1 on Thursday gave the wrong number of a bill in the Oregon Legislature dealing with the hunting of cougars and bears. The correct bill number is Senate Bill 389.

SALEM - Counties could repeal voter-passed curbs on cougar and bear hunting under a proposal passed by a House panel, to the dismay of wildlife advocates.

The House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee's action drew criticism from environmentalists and animal-rights supporters because the proposal was brought up without advance notice as an amendment to a bill that would ban the use of remote-controlled weapons to shoot wildlife via the Internet.

"It's a dirty deal. It's the kind of thing that would not get out of here if it had to stand on its own," said Sally Mackler, wildlife issues coordinator for the Oregon chapter of the Sierra Club.

The amended version of Senate Bill 689 passed 6-1 and now heads to the House floor. It would allow citizens to petition their county commissions to refer to the local ballot a vote on whether to permit the practice of using bait to lure bears and dogs to track cougars and drive them up into trees - practices that were banned in a statewide vote in 1994.

Committee Chairwoman Patti Smith said she brought up the surprise amendment Wednesday because it was "the opportune time." The Corbett Republican acknowledged that it is controversial to graft such a proposal onto a bill without public notice, since this denies people a chance to prepare and present testimony.

"That's kind of the way it is," she said. "It happens to a lot of us here."

Smith said the issue addressed by the amendment - allowing each county to decide whether to control bear and cougar populations through hunting - was more important than the question of legislative procedure.

Bear and cougar hunting has been a politically sensitive issue since 1994, when voters passed an initiative banning the use of bait to lure bears and hounds to track cougars. It passed on the strength of urban support for wildlife protection.

Rural Oregonians saw the measure as both an encroachment on one of their recreational outlets and as a risk to human life and property, since hunting is the main way the population of these two species is controlled.

In 1996, a measure to repeal that law was rejected on a statewide ballot.

In the past decade, lawmakers have proposed measures to roll back or loosen the hunting restrictions, but have failed, largely because of the political peril associated with tampering with the will of the voters.

Since 1994, Oregon's cougar population has grown from 3,100 to 5,500, said Ron Anglin, director of the Wildlife Division at the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife.

He said the hunting restrictions are the main reason for the population explosion, and subsequent increase in reported cases of cougar sightings and cougar attacks on pets and livestock.

It's still legal to hunt for cougar in season without dogs, but the big cats are hard to corner.

The statewide cougar harvest quota for this year was increased 3 percent, to 579. Statewide general cougar seasons is running Jan. 1-May 31 and Aug. 1-Dec. 31.

"Hunting mortality is not keeping up with the rate of growth, and has allowed the population to continue to expand," Anglin said. "There's not any portion of the state that has not been touched by cougar problems."

But advocates for the original 1994 ban said they - and a majority of Oregonians - remain committed to the curbs on bait and hounds, which they consider unsporting and cruel.

Mackler said the proposal would "bring back a practice that the public thought was unethical and that the public twice said it doesn't want to see."

Smith said the problem is getting serious enough that lawmakers must put their concern for protecting human life and property ahead of their worries about violating the voters' will.

She had backed a separate measure, House Bill 2759, which would create pilot areas throughout the state, including in Douglas and Coos counties, where cougar hunting with dogs would be allowed, regulated by the Department of Fish & Wildlife, as a means of population control.

But the bill has been languishing for two months in a budget panel because of the cost to the state - $2.2 million in 2005-07 and $3.3 million in 2007-09.

Rep. Terry Beyer of Springfield was one of two Democrats who joined with all four Republicans on the agriculture panel Wednesday in passing the hunting bill. She said she had some misgivings about including bear hunting with bait and was not pleased with the surprise tactics used to bring the proposal to the House floor.

Still, she said she was convinced that the threat of cougars to human life and property was becoming a serious problem, including in the eastern fringes of her own district.

"I am firmly of the opinion we have a problem with cougars," she said. "They are moving into the populated areas - or the populated areas are moving out to them."

CAPTION(S):

"It's a dirty deal. It's the kind of thing that would not get out of here if it had to stand on its own." - SALLY MACKLER, SIERRA CLUB