Most of you probably by now have already heard of the 6-year-old Texas boy, Rivers Hobbs, who was attacked by a mountain lion while walking on a sidewalk between a restaurant and their hotel in Big Bend National Park. It is all very unfortunate and unnecessary.
The news accounts and debates and discussions contain all the same worn out drivel about man’s encroachment on animals, animals being animals, people needing to assume a certain amount of risk, and let’s never forget the famous words that ALWAYS follow such attacks, “it is very unusual for a mountain lion to attack someone”. Park spokesman David Elkowitz who made that statement actually said, “it is very unusual for a mountain lion to attack someone so close to a building”. Does that mean that had they been a few feet further from the buildings such attacks are normal and readily acceptable?
No matter what we as humans do in life, we assume certain risks; some to extremes and others in which we hope all sensible precautions have been taken to limit that risk. The question, of which will never be answered in this case is, were all the sensible precautions taken?
There are the obvious ones as to how much was done, especially knowing that the same day a mountain lion had been chased away from a seeming potential attack on hikers nearby. I will leave that debate up to the usual roster of “he saids and she saids”.
Consider if you will the notion that this mountain lion attacked the kid because it was hungry. The same park spokesman, Mr. Elkowitz, said in the newspaper account, “attacks are most common by older and younger lions, who both struggle to find food”. While this statement standing all alone I suppose contains a certain amount of truth, one has to wonder if there are reasons beyond the scope of most human knowledge that unnecessarily leads predators like this to attack people outside of those “very unusual” times, whatever that exactly means? In short, is there something that could have been done to prevent this from happening?
Let me try to explain. If I am to take off into the forests and fields for perhaps no other reason than to “get away from it all”, obviously I am taking on myriad risks on nearly every plane of danger. In staying in context with this discussion, I am bound to run into an assortment of wild animals, including predators, some of which could become life threatening. In such a case, I should be prepared as best I can, while having knowledge and understanding of the risks.
On the other extreme, if I’m not all that interested in assuming those kinds of risks, I’ll go to the zoo and see animals, where, at least from the zoos I’ve attended, the risks are greater some tourist will pick my pockets than me getting injured by an attacking animal.
And then we have the quasi zoos or the quasi forests and fields, where people can pretend they are in the wild while at the same time getting a transmuted zoo experience. We’ve decided to call them parks. Part of the problem with these parks is that the wildlife is allowed to “naturally regulate”. Combine that with the fact that there is demand from the ticket buyers to see animals and have a “wilderness experience”.
This social demand to “view” wildlife, has now crept into our state and federal wildlife management organizations, not just relegated to parks, and as such, we are protecting too many species, particularly predators, and allowing for too many of them, the results of which we are now just beginning to see. I would challenge anyone to find a time in history in which this country had more wildlife than it does now.
At one time, fish and game departments created plans to manage wildlife based on a successful North American model. This model involved hunting the animals. The development of those plans were based on many things, including the ability of a particular forest to handle a certain capacity of certain species and concerns for public safety for such things as human encounters, including automobile accidents, etc.. Missing from those older management plans was what needed to be done to manage for wildlife viewing by residents and tourists alike.
With such an unscientific, emotion-based, selfish and irrational demand to grow more animals for people to see from their automobiles, we have upped the anti on assumed risk and I contend we fail to recognize or have knowledge of this increase.
I certainly am not trying to convince readers that Rivers Hobbs would not have been attacked by a mountain lion on a sidewalk in a national park if there was hunting of mountain lions allowed in the park,. What I am asking is whether there are simply too many lions in this particular park and are we working so hard to grow wildlife everywhere, for those too lazy to get out of their cars and into the field, that we have unwittingly brought on this kind of danger? And are we ill-prepared to deal with it?
Tom Remington
