Pressure Mounts For Arizona To Ban Dog Pack Hunting Of Mountain Lions, Bears & Other Critical Species

Conservation groups have submitted a petition to the Arizona Game and Fish Commission urging a ban on the use of dog packs for hunting mountain lions, bears, bobcats, foxes, and other wildlife. The petition calls for the commission to modernize Arizona’s hunting regulations, aligning them with steps taken in other states to better protect both wildlife and public safety.

“The science is clear, packs of hunting dogs let loose on public lands cause significant harm to native ecosystems and wildlife. Their prohibition in Arizona is long overdue,” said Russ McSpadden, Southwest conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Currently hunters use GPS-collared dogs to track wildlife for miles via smart phone apps and satellites, often from their vehicles. This trophy hunting method not only undermines fair chase principles, as well as Arizona and federal law, it also disrupts hundreds of species of native wildlife and threatens jaguars, wolves, and ocelots, just as these amazing endangered species are staging a comeback to the wilds of Arizona.”

Arizona Game and Fish data reveals that hunters using packs of dogs killed 748 mountain lions and 323 bears between 2020 and 2023. A 2020 study estimated Arizona’s total mountain lion population to be between 1,166 and 1,715 individuals.

“It’s just common sense that hunting mountain lions with dog packs is not fair chase, a principle that has guided hunting practices for more than a century,” said R. Brent Lyles, executive director of the Mountain Lion Foundation. “Mountain lions are critically important, and they deserve better than to be shot out of a tree after being cornered there by hounds wearing radio collars.

Today’s petition states that releasing unsupervised dogs on public lands creates hazards for humans and may violate the Endangered Species Act. It highlights cases where packs of hunting dogs endanger hikers and other public land users, inadvertently targeting federally protected animals like jaguars. The petition also stresses that the practice violates hunting ethics.

The petition also points out the significant risk of harm to hunting dogs themselves, including physical injuries, abandonment of underperforming or injured dogs, chronic health complications due to exhaustion, dehydration, and selective breeding. Dogs are sometimes purposely starved by their owners to increase their prey drive.

The proposed changes would only restrict the use of dogs in recreational hunts for large mammals. We must keep the pressure on the Arizona Game and Fish Commission to ban hunting of all species throughout the state.