I'm proud to put this option on my car for mountain lion conservation

[Omaha Steve]

Last edited Sat Jun 17, 2017, 07:33 PM - Edit history (1)

I put it on my car Thursday. Marta is thinking about the elephant zoo plate below.



http://www.omaha.com/outdoors/mountain-lion-specialty-plates-bought-and-expect-that-count-will/article_b2370954-df64-11e6-b742-8704499ed3fa.html

LINCOLN — Nebraskans have purchased more than 5,000 of the new mountain lion specialty license plates.

Revenue from the cougar plates has generated nearly $28,100 for the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission’s wildlife conservation education fund, said Jim Douglas, commission director.

“We expect that count will grow,” he said Friday during a commission meeting in Lincoln.

A fiscal analysis predicted last year that the plates could raise about $20,000.

FULL story at link.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Love it! Wish we had mountain lion plates in MN.

I got a loon for mine (appropriately), and there are some other conservation plates, but sadly no mountain lions.

[ProudLib72]

2. They used to be viewed as pests not that long ago

The federal government put a bounty on them.
(This site looks kind of cheesy, but it has a lot of good info)
link: http://www.mountainlion.org/cal_ch5.asp

The U.S. Government entered the business of exterminating wild animals (many of them on public lands) in 1915, when western stockmen pressured Congress to appropriate $125,000 to wipe out wolves and coyotes and supposedly save beef for our allies in World War I.(21, 22) The U.S. Biological Survey, the predecessor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was charged with the responsibility of hiring hunters and trappers to do the job. But it was the passage of the Animal Damage Control Act of 1931 that gave birth to ADC and provided the money and authority to expand the destruction of mountain lions, wolves, coyotes, bobcats, prairie dogs, gophers, ground squirrels, jackrabbits, and other animals injurious to agriculture, horticulture, forestry, husbandry, game, or domestic animals, or that carried disease. (21)

Federal predator control efforts are augmented by state hunters and bounty programs. Arizona originally considered the cougar an undesirable predator, and 2,400 were killed between 1918 and 1947. Efforts to eliminate the cat were accelerated in 1947 when the state began to offer a bounty varying from $50 to $100 per lion; between 1947 and 1969, over 5,400 cougars were slaughtered in Arizona.(24) Federal, state, and private hunters killed 1,775 pumas in Colorado between 1916 and 1965. (25) California paid out bounties on 12,452 cougars killed between 1907 and 1963, when the program was eliminated by the state legislature.

[irisblue]

3. Nice looking plates