This is because California state law forbids pre-emptively killing cougars. From 1907 to 1963, the state paid a bounty for dead lions. But in 1972, California banned hunting the big cats; and, in 1990, voters made them a "specially protected species." Now, authorities can kill a lion only after it has demonstrated it is a safety threat, and private citizens can kill one only (with a special permit) after it has damaged property or livestock.
This lion coddling comes with a price. "Prior to 1986," DFG reported in its Outdoor California magazine, "there was very little concern for public safety threats from lions. Although historic records reported fatal attacks on humans in 1890 and 1909, no further attacks occurred until March 1986. That year a lion seriously injured a young girl visiting an Orange County park."
This January, a lion killed one mountain biker and wounded another in separate incidents at an Orange County wilderness park. A few days later, a study released by U.C. Davis said there had been six mountain lion attacks and two deaths in California in the previous 10 years. Meanwhile, reported mountain lion incidents proliferate along California's coast -- from a golfer being stalked in San Diego County, to children being warned in posh Marin that a lion was sighted near their school.
When Californians hunted lions, lions didn't hunt them. Now man and beast are switching roles.
Nothing more starkly exemplifies how environmentalist ideology has turned upside down the way man views his relationship with nature. When Americans first went west, we unabashedly went to conquer the wild things and bring them under our dominion. Now we aren't sure if this is our land or theirs.