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It was once rambunctious and bustling - home to 12,000 people during its peak - but by 1990 it had long been quiet, and the population had settled to under 2,000. Colorful Victorian-era homes line the streets, holdovers from the town’s founding in 1859 when gold was discovered. It hugs the edge of Interstate 70 and is hemmed in by the Rocky Mountains. The town of Idaho Springs, Colorado, is 2 miles long and three blocks wide, give or take. In the 1990s, mountain lion attacks - and deaths - peaked, with four fatalities, a number not seen since. At the same time, the human population was growing, and metro areas and mountain towns such as Salt Lake City and Boulder, Colorado, began to sprawl. As their population began to rebound, they started to return to their historic ranges, eventually showing up in states from South Dakota to Connecticut. Mountain lions became a conservation success story, and researchers were finally able to study them in earnest. In Utah today, the going price for a lion tag is $58.

Now, instead of states paying for a dead lion, they charged hunters for the chance to kill one. Acceptance of the animals ended bounty programs across the country, and many states moved to reclassify them as game animals. During the zeitgeist of the late 1960s cultural revolution, both perceptions and policy started to shift. And while the cats remained in pockets throughout the West, they were mostly eradicated from states east of the Mississippi.Ī few decades later - once the mountain lions were either dead or good as dead - America’s attitude toward them shifted dramatically. By the early 1900s many states had succeeded in killing off their entire population of mountain lions. Roosevelt, wanting a little recreation, has chosen to hunt mountain lion for a pastime.” He killed 14 during his monthlong trip. A report in the Meeker Herald stated, “Mr. In 1901, Teddy Roosevelt took a vacation to Colorado between the end of his governorship of New York and taking office as vice president. Fresh mountain lion tracks descend into Provo Canyon, where deer are abundant. Over the course of Arizona’s 51-year bounty program, the state paid out a sum of $386,150 to hunters who brought in dead mountain lions. In 1888, the Utah Territorial Legislature established its own bounty and classified the mountain lion as an “obnoxious animal.” For the next 71 years, hunters in Utah could trade kills for cash. Connecticut was the first state to issue a bounty on mountain lions in 1684. While lions roamed the country among the Native American population, the colonists arrived with both the tools (steel traps, dogs and guns) and the desire to kill them, which they did after their livestock kept turning up dead.Įarly mountain lion policy in the U.S.

Since the arrival of European settlers in North America, humans and mountain lions have had a contentious relationship. So, what’s to come in the western United States, where human-mountain lion interactions - fueled by shrinking boundaries between human habitat and lion habitat - are certain to rise? It’s a course of events that has repeated itself across the West after someone is killed or attacked by a lion: states react swiftly and definitively against the lions.

Politicians introduced new legislation, and in defiance of the recommendations of state biologists, Fish and Wildlife commissioners voted to increase hunting limits. A renewed and widespread fear of mountain lions swept through Washington, triggering a new lack of tolerance for mountain lions in the wild in a state that up until that point, was interested in heeding scientific data on how best to manage the animal. Mountain lions that feel threatened by people or pets will usually retreat into higher country, steep terrain or trees. Officials later found the lion standing over Brooks’ body amongst the brush and trees. By the time he reached the 911 dispatch officer, it was too late. Grabbing his bike, he knew he had to find cell service. He saw the lion dragging Brooks into the woods. ‘I don’t feel like dying today’: Utahn describes how he survived 6-minute cougar encounter This footage shows a mountain lion stalking children in a California neighborhoodįor Sederbaum, bleeding from wounds on his head and neck, the attack had stopped.