The Washington Legislature is considering a bill that will allow handlers to train their hounds to pursue cougars.

Hunters might rescue a crumbling elk herd in southeast Washington by killing a few more cougars, say state wildlife managers, who have outraged environmental groups.

Cougars eating newborn elk calves is the main reason the Blue Mountain herd is getting smaller, according to the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The department’s staff proposes letting hunters who come across and kill one cougar to buy a second cougar tag. Currently, hunters are limited to one cougar a season.

The overall harvest limit for the Blue Mountains would remain the same. Hunters killed 19 cougars last season, three short of the limit.

State law bars the department from using hounds to hunt for cougars to control the population. Trapping and euthanizing cougars would be costly, Game Division Manager Anis Aoude said.

“If there are folks who are successful and able to get a cougar, giving them a second tag would be probably the best option in harvesting more cougars,” he said.

“This is a first step. We want to see if we can actually increase harvests,” Aoude said. 

The Fish and Wildlife Commission is scheduled to vote on the proposal July 15. At a hearing June 22, environmental groups accused the department of catering to elk hunters.

“I know I speak for a lot of Washingtonians when I say I am tired of the department treating the whole state of Washington like a game farm,” Washington Wildlife First executive director Samantha Bruegger said.

Fish and Wildlife estimates there are 3,600 elk in the Blue Mountain herd in Asotin, Columbia, Garfield and Walla Walla counties. The department’s goal to have about 5,500, a number set to balance providing hunting opportunities with minimizing damage to farm crops.

Calves are born at a healthy weight, but too few are surviving to reverse the herd’s decline, according to the department.

“Their fate happens after they hit the ground,” Aoude said. “It’s clearly a predation issue, not a nutrition issue.”

The herd shrank by 20% from 2015 to 2017. The department cut back on hunting of adult females, but the problem of too few calves surviving continued.

Recreational hunters can help conservation, according to the department’s staff.

Fish and Wildlife Commissioner Melanie Rowland said she “completely disagreed with the idea of setting an objective for an animal population based on the fact humans want to hunt them.”

“I can’t see that we need, as others have said, to kill more cougars so we can kill more elk,” she said.

“Yes, cougars prey on elk calves. They’d be pretty stupid if they didn’t. And, frankly, I don’t think cougars are that stupid,” Rowland said. “But is it a problem? I don’t see the problem.”

Fish and Wildlife Director Kelly Susewind said an elk herd was dwindling to an all-time low and that not enough calves were surviving to sustain the population.

“That, to me, is a problem,” he said. “I’ve never heard staff say we want to kill more cougars so we can kill more elk.”

The proposal has the support of the Inland Northwest Wildlife Council, a sportsmen’s group.

“Cougars right now are doing well in the Blue Mountains, but if we don’t help this elk herd, they will run out of a prey species they rely on and their numbers will be hurting as well,” the council’s executive director, Marie Neumiller, said.