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BUT you forgot the important bit: The number of cougars killed for sport and for damage complaints has doubled since the measure passed.

Yes, BUT:

Over the past decade, the estimated cougar population has grown from about 3,200 animals to between 5,000 and 6,000, with hunter harvest and damage problems soaring right along with it.

Despite the increased kill-rate, the breeding population has ALSO nearly doubled, and may still be growing. As numbers go up, hunter success should also increase, and MAINTAIN the population at a desired level. Instead, kill rates have increased, and so has population, beyond desired management levels.

What also tends to get ignored in the arguments is that not only are encroaching people squeezing the wildlife into smaller & smaller habitat areas, and thus increasing the people/predator encounters, they are also doing the same to domestic livestock. This forces the livestock & predators into closer shared proximity, resulting in more losses.

You might have something there down in lower 48, and hunters do play their part too but;;; Once predator numbers explode up here in alaska; moose & caribou suffer terribly. Calf survival drops to like 15% and you end up with a bunch of 13 year old barren cows. Now they say each wolf takes 6-12 moose each year. In our community of 130 people only 6 got a moose last fall; everyone use to. Without good game management, its boom and bust (the real balance of nature). The land stagnates and only produces 10% of what it can; and man might as well quit hunting.

Up here, moose and bear don't even want to be around people for the most part; they live up at higher elevations only winter down low. I've had wolves look my dogteam over and if you dry fish; you'll have bear there pretty quick. Guess I'd rather control numbers for highest production than have hungry country for everything.

It could be worse though. I keep an old plott as a guard dog and I'd hate to hunt this rugged country up here with no roads for hundreds of miles.

Who's encroaching on habitat? Nobody can build anything outside urban growth boundaries.

The only encroaching is by coyotes and cougars on populated areas.

Unfortunately, it's gonna take a number of suburban encounters where someone dies before this idiotic policy is finally reversed.