SUPPORT FOR AGENDA ITEM 37 RESOLUTION OF THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF THE COUNTY OF VENTURA PROCLAIMING SANTA MONICA MOUNTAINS MOUNTAIN LIONS IN NEED OF EXPANDED PROTECTIONS
UPDATED — In a 3-2 vote lead by Supervisor Linda Parks, Ventura County Board of Supervisors voted to protect mountain lions in Ventura County. See Federation support below……
On behalf of the Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation, Inc., of the Santa Monica Mountains, and our thousands of stakeholders and homeowners, we strongly urge you to SUPPORT the resolution as referenced above.
As residents of mountain communities for more than 50 years, we have fought for the preservation and conservation of the Santa Monica Mountains and the protection of our precious wildlife. Climate change, fire, rodenticides, urban sprawl, habitat fragmentation, and depredation permits, are a mounting threat to mountain lion survival like never before.
The public has invested heavily in protecting habitat for our mountain lions and also in research such that they will continue to survive in the largest urban park in the United States — and, so that future generations will be able to experience the true majesty and joy of knowing these special animals are not extinct here.
It is absolutely incumbent upon livestock owners who live in the urban wildland interface to take responsibility for their own livestock and businesses. The “onus is on the owner”, if you live and do commerce or hobby farming here — enclosed pens, for example, are common sense, no-brainer solutions. Otherwise, animal keeping without real protection amounts to nothing more than providing bait for our wild animals. Mountain lions are a valuable public resource that cannot continue to be eradicated by careless individual animal keepers.
We strongly urge you to end the issuance of depredation permits in Ventura County for mountain lions that attacked livestock or other animals. And to support the California Endangered Species Act to protect Southern California mountain lions.
The death of P-56 was an unnecessary and unfathomable loss — which should have and could have been prevented.