Committee hears hours of testimony on mountain lion bill; item not moved and is postponed

Lawmakers heard several hours of testimony and agency analysis on House Bill 286, which would change how Wyoming manages mountain lions and would authorize expanded harvest methods in the name of improving mule deer survival. The committee took public comment from hunters, landowners, conservation groups, and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and did not move the bill forward.

Representative Sandy Schmidt introduced HB286 and said the bill is “as much about mule deer as it is mountain lions,” citing long-term declines in mule deer numbers and proposing new statewide mountain lion season rules, possession tags, and authorization of trapping and snaring. “This is an act relating to mountain lions…requiring annual mountain lion hunting season; prohibiting hunt areas, hunt area mortality limits, statewide mortality limits, bag limits, and hours for taking mountain lions,” Schmidt said while walking members through the bill language and numeric examples.

Representative Steve Harrelson, co-presenting, and sponsor Schmidt described regional mule deer declines and presented figures used in committee testimony: decade-range statewide estimates discussed in committee included roughly 450,000 mule deer about 10 years earlier, declines to 345,000 in a later estimate, and pre-brutal-winter 2021 estimates near 290,000; the Wyoming range herd was cited as roughly 50,000 historically, 30,000 before a severe winter and an estimate “8 to 12,000” in recent counts. Schmidt and others argued predation (mountain lions, bears, coyotes) contributes to fawn losses and that additional lion harvest is one available management tool.

Wyoming Game and Fish Director Angie Bruce and Chief Game Warden Dan Smith testified that HB286 would strip the Game and Fish Commission’s authority to set seasons, bag and mortality limits, hunt-area designations and shooting hours. “This bill removes the Game and Fish Commission's authority over managing mountain lions,” Director Bruce told the committee. Chief Smith highlighted fiscal and data-collection consequences and said the department collects mountain lion license revenue; he estimated 2024 mountain lion license receipts at $213,481 and noted a potential loss in revenue if licensing shifted because a hunter could harvest a mountain lion using an existing big-game license instead of purchasing a mountain-lion license.

Agency experts also told the committee the department already uses seasons and quotas, public comment and regional management to address population changes, and that past localized increases in mountain-lion harvest did not show detectable changes in mule deer populations in at least one hunt area cited by Game and Fish. The department opposed removing its existing authority and cautioned that setting unlimited or statewide harvest without regionally tailored science could undermine management and public input.

Hundreds of members of the public and stakeholder organizations spoke in opposition to the bill during the compressed public-comment period: the Cougar Fund, Wyoming Houndsman Association, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, Wyoming Wildlife Federation and multiple outfitters, conservation groups and hunters opposed the measure and urged reliance on the department’s science-based management. Several local houndsmen and hunting representatives told the committee the bill would amount to “ballot-box biology” and remove established public input.

Representative Schmidt and Representative Harrelson asked the committee to consider the bill as a tool to address mule deer declines; committee members raised habitat, disease (chronic wasting disease), weather and long-term trends as additional drivers. No legislator moved HB286 to a vote, and the chair announced the item was “indefinitely postponed due to lack of a motion.”

The transcript shows a lengthy agency and public record on the topic; the department said it will continue work on mule deer strategies and that the commission’s three-year regulatory cycle and public engagement remain primary management tools.