Lawmaker seeks cost-effective ways to control predators

By MITCH LIES

Capital Press

SALEM -- A bill permitting counties to allow the use of dogs to hunt cougars has yet to surface in the joint Ways and Means Committee, but its chief sponsor says it is still alive.

Rep. Sherrie Sprenger, R-Scio, said she expects the bill to soon come up for a vote in the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Natural Resources.

House Bill 4119 is nearly identical to a bill that passed the House last session but failed to clear the Senate. The House Agriculture and Natural Resources committee passed it Feb. 14.

Oregon voters banned the use of dogs to hunt cougars when they approved Measure 18 in 1994.

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife estimates the number of cougars in Oregon has increased since then from about 3,000 to around 5,700 today.

The increase has hurt the state's deer and elk populations. Attacks on livestock have also increased, according to wildlife officials.

Several people who testified at the Feb. 14 hearing also reported cougar sightings near rural schools and said they feared it was only a matter of time before a cougar harms a child.

Scott Beckstead, director of the Oregon Chapter of the Humane Society of the United States, urged lawmakers not to be swayed by what he called "fear tactics."

A majority of Oregon voters chose to ban the use of dogs to hunt cougars, he said, "because they find that practice to be impermissibly cruel and unsporting."

"It was a value judgment and the same arguments and the same fear tactics that are present here today were present back then," he said.

Beckstead added that Measure 18 was written so that individual cougars that cause problems can be taken with the use of dogs.

"If you want to go back to the way it was before, then it needs to go to the voters," Beckstead said. "It was their decision to ban this practice. It should be their decision to repeal it."

Curt Melcher, deputy director for ODFW, said the bill could save the state money and help the department control the growing cougar population. The state currently has cougar-target areas, where department agents use hounds to reduce the cougar populations.

"Under any expanded opportunity like is contemplated in this bill, I would think that we would much reduce, if not be able to eliminate that expense, and utilize individuals who would purchase a tag and focus their efforts into areas where we want to see cougar numbers controlled," Melcher said.

The committee sent the bill to Ways and Means with a do-pass recommendation by a 6-1 vote, with Rep. Debbie Boone, D-Cannon Beach, voting no.

"In keeping with my personal policy about not going against the will of voters, I will not be supporting the bill today," Boone said in the Feb. 14 committee meeting.

"Speaking of the will of the voters, in my district they wanted to do this, and they didn't have an opportunity," Sprenger said.

Sprenger said she has heard several times that, "One of the biggest reasons to not support this ... is nobody has been hurt yet.

"That to me infers that we're waiting for something (to happen) to do something," Sprenger said. "And I'm not willing to do that."