I am working on an article on mountain lions, in a place where attitudes and
opinions about them are pretty heated (TX). One source mentioned that in
other states that there are "source sink" models of management and this
sounded like a really interesting idea. Basically you have areas that
provide a source of the mountain lions (such as protected national parks),
sinks such as working ranches that tend to kill mountain lions, and then the
idea is also that the areas between the source and the sink are "neutral" so
that they can harbor some of the expanding source populations but buffer
them from the sinks.
Does anyone here have personal experience working with a mountain lion
population following a source-sink model in a management setting? Or
alternatively has anyone worked on models of this type of management? Feel
free to send along others' contact info or to forward my email.
Also in our previous discussion about hunting and conservation, someone
mentioned the David Quammen book Monster of God. I got that and am browsing
through it. I can't find the person who suggested this in the Ecolog
archives so maybe they emailed me offlist. Anyone on here remember this??
There was something I wanted to mention in my mountain lion article based on
that but the book is like 9,000 pages long ;) He's a great writer though,
and very eloquent. It's about how certain alpha predators inspire fear in
humans, and how that has affected their survival and also is a part of our
human cultural history - one we may lose for some species if conservation
efforts are not successful.
Wendee
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Wendee Holtcamp, M.S. Wildlife Ecology
Freelance Writer * Photographer * Bohemian
<http://www.wendeeholtcamp.com/>
http://www.wendeeholtcamp.com
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