After issuing a permit to kill a mountain lion known as P-45, California officials have encountered protests from animal welfare groups who say the animal is simply following its instincts.
The permit allows the owner of a ranch in the area of the Malibu Hills to hire a hunter to kill P-45 after it slaughtered 10 alpacas and injured two others Saturday night. It is illegal to kill a mountain lion without a permit, but 10-day permits are issued when the mountain lion kills livestock on a person’s property, according to the Los Angeles Times.
At least four mountain lions have recently attacked wildlife in the area. Scientists have tagged and tracked P-45 since last December, and he is the largest to be tracked in the study area since 2002, KPCC reported.
Animal welfare groups said it is “unfair to punish the puma for acting on its instincts,” the LA Times reported.
“Once inside an enclosure, the prey have nowhere to run, and the cat’s predatory instincts are triggered over and over until it has killed every animal in the pen. This isn’t play or viciousness, it’s about self-protection,” the Mountain Lion Foundation of Sacramento said in a statement, according to the LA Times.
Neighbor Wendell Phillips also lost alpacas over the summer to a mountain lion attack by P-45, CBS News reported. He tried to hunt the cat but only grazed him with a bullet.
“If he was just eating one animal every once in a while because he was hungry, everyone would understand that. But this, no,” Phillips told CBS Los Angeles. “Nobody wants to kill him. He is an animal and I want to preserve his life, but I don’t want to donate my animals to the food chain.”
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