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Over the pleas of conservationists and animal lovers, state wildlife managers Thursday boosted the number of hunters who can try to bag a cougar next year.
In a national campaign to discourage trophy hunting, the Humane Society has challenged the way states determine how many cougars need to be killed, claiming they are ignoring scientific standards.
And the Wildlife Conservancy asked Utah Wildlife Board members to decrease the annual predator culling by as much as 25 percent.
Instead, board members voted to increase the number of cougar hunting permits from 460 to 492, starting with the 2016 hunt.
Conservationists said the fact that there was any increase at all flies in the face of research.
"Once again, they are not informed by the best available science," said Kirk Robinson, executive director of the Utah-based Western Wildlife Conservancy. "The best science really supports killing fewer cougars."
At the same time, board members approved a new cougar management plan, which will not be revisited for another 10 years.
But now, permit changes will be reviewed annually. Previously, they were reviewed every three years.
While the elusive nature of cougars makes their exact numbers difficult to determine, Division of Wildlife Resources mammals program coordinator Leslie McFarlane said, the amount of suitable habitat in Utah suggests a population of 2,500 to 4,500 cougars in the state.
The new plan, which is otherwise very similar to the previous management plan, calls for managing "metapopulations" on the landscape — meaning that numbers of deer, bighorn sheep and other species, including humans and livestock, must be taken into account when determining how many cougar permits are issued each year.
Permits for individual hunting zones, or units, did not increase across the board. Wildlife board members recommended decreasing the number of permits issued in six units — Beaver, Northwest and Southwest Manti, Fillmore-Pahvant, Mt. Dutton and Ogden.
The wildlife board also recommended increases in 10 units — Book Cliffs-Bitter Creek, Box Elder-Pilot Mountain, Cache, East Canyon, Monroe, Morgan-South Rich, Oquirrh-Stansbury, Plateau-Fishlake, Southwest Desert and Wasatch Mountains-Currant Creek.
The number of cougar hunting permits increased the most in the Book Cliffs unit — going from 20 permits in 2015 to 29 in 2016. Board members declined to increase permits in the unit to 38 as originally proposed by state biologists to cut into a reported glut of young male cats. McFarlane testified during Thursday's hearing that there was evidence of cougar overpopulation in the Book Cliffs unit.
The wildlife board approved the adjustment at the Book Cliffs only after determining that the number of permits issued for the unit would decrease in future years as the cougar population in the area declines.
But conservationists said any increase does not account for today's best science.
Robinson, who said he has spent the last 26 years researching cougars and wildlife management policies, said he believes cougar permits in Utah need to be reduced by one-fourth.
The current average age of cougars taken by hunters is about 38 months, he said. It takes 44 months for a female cougar to mature and raise its first litter to independence — which Robinson said indicates many cougar kittens are left to starve to death when young female cougars are taken during trophy hunts.
"That's a matter of concern to me and a lot of people," he said.
Robinson said trophy hunting also creates pressure to kill a disproportionate number of mature, established male cougars. When that happens, he said, it creates a void in the cougars' social structure that becomes a sort of vacuum for juvenile males who may take over undefended territory, often killing other kittens and females in the process.
These juvenile males are also more likely to attack pets or livestock, because they haven't learned to track and kill proper prey, Robinson said.
"It's the equivalent of human teenagers roaming the land," he said. "We might end up with more problems if we kill too many cougars."
The national Humane Society also weighed in on the plan this year, echoing similar concerns about the disruption of cougar social structure and objecting to the nature of trophy hunting in general.
While the Humane Society does not object to hunting in general, it does object to what it considers "egregious" hunting practices, including hounding, baiting and trapping, said Wendy Keefover, who oversees the Humane Society's national Native Carnivore Protection program.
Keefover said she believes the group's position represents the opinion of the majority of Americans at this point, in light of the outrage over the death of Cecil the Lion. The Humane Society, she said, decided to take advantage of the public comment period associated with the review of Utah's Cougar management plan to raise public awareness about issues surrounding domestic trophy hunting.
Keefover said the new management plan suggests 20 to 30 percent of Utah's cougar population could be hunted each year without detrimentally impacting the cougar population. But current science suggests eliminating between 11 and 14 percent of adult animals is sustainable.
With an annual average of 421 cougars taken by hunters in Utah each year, that puts the state's harvesting rate at about 9 percent, McFarlane said.