‘We Can’t Just Leave Cougars Unmanaged’ – NE WA Researcher

A Northeast Washington wildlife biologist lays the problem of chronic cougar conflicts and political battles around the big cats in the state at the feet of a 1996 ballot initiative that sidelined hound hunters.

Bart George also links that “bad” decision to county sheriffs’ liberal interpretation of safety clauses to remove cougars perceived to be threatening local residents or their animals, leading to further attempts by animal-rights groups to restrict the best way to track and chase down the predators.

“Bad policy propagates poor outcomes while complicating research and setting depredation decisions up for increased conflict at the [Fish and Wildlife] commission level and in the public square – places where anti-hunting organizations have leverage and palatable messaging. We’ve seen this ad nauseum in Washington state for years now,” George writes in an article headlined “The Costs of Cougars” and posted this week by Sportsmen’s Alliance.

George works for the Kalispel Indian Tribe and researches cougars – “(With) my hounds I have probably put more up a tree in the last decade than just about anyone” – with a focus on aversive conditioning, that is, figuring out how to keep the predators and people safe from one another.

While stating that cougars belong in the environment and that folks need to learn to live with them, he questions predator advocates’ zeal to have lot of lions on the landscape regardless.

“We can’t just leave cougars unmanaged, especially when a vocal minority is screaming ‘more, more, more,’ without weighing the cost to hunters and those who live in cougar country,” George states.

He compares and contrasts Washington, where pursuing cougars with dogs was banned outside of research like his, with Idaho, where a similar voter initiative failed.

Washington is “rife with human-cougar conflict; George writes that he’s been on “hundreds” of calls involving cat attacks on livestock, pets and “yes, even people.”

“It’s not as ‘rare’ of an occurrence as the media would lead you to believe, it’s just not reported unless it’s an extreme example involving the disfigurement or death of a human,” he says.

By comparison, in Idaho, “it’s completely different,” with hardly any cat conflicts to work.

“Why? One big reason is because cougars are routinely chased by recreational hound hunters. The occasional mature tom might be killed but for the most part, a houndsman’s dogs get worked, the cougar is treed, pictures are taken, and the cat is left unscathed but having learned to avoid humans,” George attests.

Washington cougar hunting now operates under a system where conflict removals also count towards hunters’ harvest quota. Seasons may not open if the quota is reached in the five months before the September 1 opener, which happened last year in the Battle Ground cougar management unit.

George also touches on wildly varying deer hunting success rates between Washington and Idaho and argues that as fans of the fanged ones try and bring what are known as “social sciences” into wildlife management, a consideration should also be made for Evergreen State deer hunters under that paradigm.

“Not just the financial impact that tag sales bring into a state – $4.2 million in Washington in 2023 – but the truly ‘socially responsible” question of: ‘should we feed one lion for a year, or should we feed 50 families?'” he writes.

Research has found that cougars typically kill the equivalent of a deer-sized animal a week, according to George.

His article originally appeared in the Winter 2025 of The Sportsmen’s Advocate, which is the Sportsmen’s Alliance’s members-only publication.

If you recognize the organization’s name, it may be because Sportsmen’s Alliance recently won a case that went all the way to the Washington Supreme Court against former Governor Jay Inslee over his appointment of Lorna Smith to the Fish and Wildlife Commission while she was simultaneously serving as a county planning commissioner.

In mid-May, they also petitioned Governor Jay Ferguson to remove not only Smith but Barbara Baker, Melanie Rowland and John Lehmkuhl from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s oversight panel for “incompetence, misconduct, and malfeasance in office.”

While acknowledging Ferguson has no deadline to respond to their petition, or even legally needs to, Sportsmen’s Alliance promises the release of more damaging emails from commissioners acquired through public records requests.

And today it also submitted more public records requests to WDFW for documents “related to communications between the offices of WDFW Director Kelly Susewind and former Governor Jay Inslee.”

“The requests specifically ask for communications regarding black bear and cougar hunting and management, gray wolf status and management, and the WDFW Commission’s proposed ‘conservation policy,'” a press release out this afternoon states.