Most of the problem is the 86-percent lay-populated Wildlife Board, whose members make management decisions based on old, discredited notions about predators, rejecting science and counsel of the state’s trained wildlife professionals.

The latest debacle occurred June 11, when the Wildlife Board disregarded the advice and urging of Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) biologists, who proposed amending the 2023 state law that opened permit-free, year-round mountain lion killing, including by traps and neck snares.

That 2023 law outraged environmental and animal wellness communities. The Western Wildlife Conservancy and Mountain Lion Foundation filed a lawsuit (ongoing), asserting that the law violates Utah’s Right to Hunt and Fish Act, which requires a “reasonable regulation of hunting.”

Animal Wellness Action condemned the law as follows: “Mountain lions are being treated with the most egregious disrespect and cruelty seen since the wildlife persecution era, more than a century ago.”

In June 2026, Utah’s biologists merely wanted to limit use of lethal mountain lion traps and neck snares on public land — due to rising concern about public safety and deaths of pets, livestock and non-target wildlife.

In public comments received by DWR, 76 percent “strongly agreed” with the trained wildlife professionals’ proposal, and 5 percent “somewhat agreed.” Still, the Wildlife Board unanimously voted it down.

So, year-round, permit-free trapping, neck snaring and shooting of mountain lions authorized by the lay-populated state legislature in 2023 will continue.

Again, environmental and animal wellness communities are outraged.

“The recommendation to ban lethal snares was developed by professional biologists at the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources and was based on years of research and review,” wrote Ellen O’Connell, executive director of the Mountain Lion Foundation. “By rejecting this recommendation, the Utah Wildlife Board unfortunately seems to have demonstrated that politics and special interest groups, rather than sound wildlife science, drives wildlife policy in Utah. Mountain lions are part of Utah’s natural heritage and the wild landscapes that help define the state. Utah’s wildlife legacy is too important to be governed in this way.”

And this from Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action: “The Utah Wildlife Board showed contempt for the norms of wildlife management in defying the recommendation from the state’s professional wildlife managers to stop indiscriminate trapping and snaring of mountain lions on public lands. These ideologues simply don’t understand the critical role that lions play in ecosystems, including by selectively removing deer and elk infected with Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) and cleansing herds of this contagious, always fatal disease.”

The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, a hunter-support group, calls CWD “the number one threat to deer hunting.”

CWD is caused by malformed, self-replicating proteins called “prions.” They’re not alive, so they can’t be killed. But, according to four peer-reviewed studies, when wild felines (all CWD-resistant) consume infected flesh, they deactivate 96-100 percent of the prions. And because CWD-stricken deer and elk stumble, wild felines select them.

The Wildlife Board’s June 11th rejection of science follows hard upon DWR’s ongoing, multi-year “study,” hatched in October 2025, to kill off mountain lions in an attempt to create more mule deer.

The agency has hired trappers from the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food, authorizing them to dispatch lions by any method. The killing, covering 8.6 million acres in six management units, will run for at least three years with the goal of indiscriminately exterminating “as many [lions] as possible.”

What science supports killing mountain lions to generate deer? “None,” reports veteran mountain lion researcher Dr. Rick Hopkins, board president of the Cougar Fund. “For years, agencies have made such claims, but when pushed to provide evidence, they can’t. Predator control has never worked anywhere.”

If any trained wildlife professional or professionals supported Utah’s “study,” he, she or they had immense help from the lay-populated DWR brass, the lay-populated state legislature, the lay-populated Utah Wild Sheep Foundation and the lay-populated Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife. Each of these last two outfits kicked in $150,000 for the “study.”

Utah’s attack on mountain lions is symptomatic of what ails wildlife management nationwide. Most decisions are not made by people qualified to make them. Instead, they’re made by boards and commissions whose politically appointed members rarely possess credentials beyond owning hunting or trapping licenses.

Ted Williams writes exclusively about fish and wildlife. He serves on the Circle of Chiefs of the Outdoor Writers Association of America, as well as being lifelong hunter and a former information officer for the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife.