SANTA FE, N.M. —The state has hired bounty hunters to kill up to 34 mountain lions, largely in southern New Mexico, to protect bighorn sheep.

Bill Dunn, a biologist with the state Game and Fish Department who is a specialist in bighorn sheep, said Monday public hunters haven't killed any lions since hunting season opened in October in three areas where sheep have been hardest hit by lions.

The agency approved contracts Monday with four hunters, who will use packs of

hounds to tree the lions so they can be shot.

The new Mexico Game Commission last July approved killing scores of lions in southern New Mexico over the next five years in an effort to protect dwindling sheep herds. Dunn said Monday's contracts are the first under that plan.

The department approved killing up to seven lions in the southern Manzano Mountains, up to seven in the Ladron Mountains and up to 20 in southern New Mexico's Bootheel.

"I doubt that they're going to get the quota, or the allowable maximum of 34," Dunn said.

From now until October, the department will pay the hunters $10 an hour for up to 80 hours a month of hunting and a $350 bounty for each lion killed, Dunn said.

The dead lions will be donated to the Museum of Southwestern Biology at the University of New Mexico, which will study the animals and keep their pelts and skulls for research, he said.

Some animal-rights groups criticized the commission's hunting plan last summer.

"It's scientifically indefensible," Lisa Jennings, director of Animal Protection of New Mexico, said. "It doesn't address the root causes of the problem, which is habitat."

Santa Fe-based Forest Guardians has called on members of the public to address the Game Commission on the lion issue when it meets in Santa Fe Thursday. Forest Guardians said the game department needs a comprehensive study before it blames lions for the condition of New Mexico's bighorn sheep herds.

Dunn said the plan is soundly based in science and necessary to preserve the herds.

Reprinted from Las Vegas Review Journal, January 12, 2000
Associated Press