Call off the hounds.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Trophy hunters are prowling the halls of the Capitol again, trying once more to get the Legislature to weaken Oregon's ban on using dogs to hunt cougars. Voters approved the ban in 1994 and affirmed their support four years later, and proposals to change the law have surfaced in every legislative session since.

Legislators can show respect for both the voters and the facts by rejecting this year's efforts.

Opponents attack the hound-hunting ban from two directions, one relying on fear and the other on reason. Neither is persuasive.

The fear-based argument points to the steep increase in cougar sightings since hound-hunting was banned. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife reported 848 sightings in 2004, up from 151 in 1992. Cougars have been seen in every Oregon county. The cougar population is estimated to have doubled over the past decade, though the animals are so elusive that no one really has an accurate count. With so many cougars prowling the state, and with some of them moving into habitat near settled areas, the risk of attacks is said to be on the rise.

The trouble with this argument is that there have been no cougar attacks on humans since the hound-hunting ban went into effect. People should be careful in cougar territory, but they should be more worried about insects than cougars - between 1980 and 1996, insect bites killed 13 people in Oregon. That's bugs 13, cougars 0.

Despite the total absence of attacks, any cougar that is perceived to be a threat can still be pursued with hounds and killed. That in- cludes any cougar that has been sighted during daytime, or any cougar that has caused damage to livestock. Oregonians have not voted to abandon all defenses against cou- gars.

The more rational argument holds that hunters help manage the cougar population, keeping it in balance with deer and elk herds. This is the argument tacitly favored by the state's fish and wildlife department, which claims to have lost its best cougar-management tool when hound-hunting was banned.

Yet, if managing cougars means hunting them, Oregon is doing a better job of management now than before the ban. Sport hunters killed 264 cougars in 2004. Ten years earlier they took only 144. It's easier to kill a cougar if a pack of dogs trees it first, but the numbers clearly show that hunters can find cougars even if the dogs stay in the kennel. It's also plain that Oregonians have not banned the only effective method for hunting cougars, just one that the majority of voters regarded as un- sporting.

One of this year's bills, House Bill 2759, would establish a pilot program for hunting cougars with hounds in 10 counties thought to have the highest cougar populations, including Douglas and Coos. The other, HB 2781, would create a pilot hunting project in six unspecified counties. It's not clear where the pilot programs would lead, except to a weakening of the voter-approved ban on hound-hunting. Such an erosion is unjustified in a state where the number of cougars killed by hunters is on the rise, and where cougars that cause any kind of problem can still be hunted with dogs. Legislators should reject both bills.