CALIFORNIA - Mountain Lion Foundation

A mountain lion's best friend
Board Profile: Margaret W Owings, the inspiration behind the fight
F
rom the lofty perch of her home,
located some 500 feet above the
crashing Pacific surf near Big Sur,
Board Chair Margaret W Owings continues
to prove that one individual can make a
difference.
For over 40 years Margaret has spearheaded
action on conservation issues that
have resulted in protection for California's
mountain lions, sea lions, sea otters and
preservation of lands that represent the
unique diversity found in California.
Margaret's story is one of an individual
who has never hesitated to use her voice,
her pen or her paintbrush in the fight to
save the wild places and wild creatures that
have meant the most to her.
A noted artist and writer it is for her
work in conservation and wildlife protection
that she is perhaps best known.
Margaret has played a critical role in the
26-year-long battle to ensure protection for
California's mountain lions. Her passion
for the issue was stirred by an occurance
that happened not far from her home.
Margaret had long enjoyed seeing
mountain lion tracks and hearing the lion's
curious whistle near her home. Part of the
privilege of living in Big Sur was being
able to enjoy a shared environment with
such a magnificent and secretive neighbor.
It was in 1962 that a mountain lion was
treed and killed near her home. When
Margaret saw the photograph of the proud
hunter collecting his $100 bounty check
beaming at the fine young male lion he had
killed, she was determined that that lion
would not die in vain.
She quickly applied the same political
skills that she had leamed several years earlier
in her successful campaign to save the
sea lions living along the California coast
from hunters. She went directly to Senator
Fred Farr of Carmel and asked him to draw
up a bill to stop the bounty.
In Margaret's own words it was "mutiny
on the bounty" during a long legislative
battle that finally brought an end to bounty
payments for mountain lions in the summer
of 1963. During the bounty period, 1907 to
1963, over 12,400 lions were killed.
Unfortunately, the battle was far from
over. The mountain lion was now a non-
Ir was a photo similar to this one that inspired Margaret W Owings to take action in 1962 to stop
bounty payments for lions.
Page 2
protected animal and could be shot at random.
In 1969 the Department of Fish and
Game classified the mountain lion as a big
game animal supposedly to "stop the indiscriminate
killing of lions" but their sale of
50 cent tags allowed hunters to kill as many
lions as they wanted, whenever and wherever
they liked. The season on mountain
lions was open year-round.
By this time, public awareness of the
mountain lion issue was increasing. Several
organizations and many people involved
in wildlife protection had joined together
to protect California's lions. Political
and public pressure to protect lions was
mounting. Finally, in 1972, a moratorium
on the trophy hunting of mountain lions
which allowed adequate protection for livestock
was passed.
Over a sixteen year period Margaret
continued to be instrumental in ensuring
that mountain lions received the protection
they deserved. When in 1986, due to political
pressure from the NRA, Governor
Deukmejian vetoed legislation extending
the trophy hunting moratorium, Margaret
joined the Foundation's board to help gain
permanent protection for lions once and for
all.
Truly Margaret Owings is an inspiration
for the fight to preserve California's last
great predator, the magnificent mountain
lion. She has been the backbone and the
inspiration for the Foundation's efforts to
assure that the mountain lion is permanently
protected. It is exciting to see that after
twenty-six years of fighting the mountain
lion may finally win that protection.
Her lifetime of dedication to speaking
out against the senseless slaughter of mountain
lions is living proof that one individual
can make a difference. California's mountain
lions, all of us and future generations
can all be thankful that in 1962 Margaret
made up her mind that the bountied lion
killed near her home would not die in vain.
- Laurie 1. Martin