Ethics Essay 2

Bioethical Issue: Protecting Bighorn Sheep----Write 10 sentences about your opinion of this issue.  Be sure to use information from the text to support your opinion.

To protect the stat’s declining bighorn sheep populations, the New Mexico Game Commission approved a plan that calls for killing scores of mountain lions over several years.  The commission pointed out that the lions have killed 36 of 43 radio-collared bighorn sheep released into the wild since 1996 and have increasingly turned to killing sheep as the state’s deer herd has declined.

                Lisa Jennings, director of Animal Protection of New Mexico, said that mountain lions and bighorns have long coexisted and that, rather than killing mountain lions, the best way to increase the bighorn sheep population would be to consider a restoration management plan that would improve the ecosystem.  Then, too, the state recently engaged the Hornocker Wildlife Institute of Idaho to study the situation.  The institute’s report concluded that the number of lions does not necessarily affect the size of the sheep population.  Rather, diseased from domestic livestock graving in the area are responsible for more than 50% of the deaths in some bighorn sheep populations.

                In reply, Bill Dunn, a state game department biologist who specialized in sheep, said that the plan to kill mountain lions was solidly based in science.  He said that killing lions in selected areas will give the sheep population a chance to rebound because there are 2000 lions and only 760 bighorn sheep in two separate populations.  Do you approve of taking steps to protect bighorn sheep from mountain lions?  Why or why not?  How would you proceed in controlling the mountain lion population?