The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has long killed thousands of cougars in the belief that population control is necessary to keep the big cats from attacking people, pets and livestock.

And for just as long, conservation groups say ODFW has based that belief on a deeply flawed system based on questionable science.

"There are too many variables," says Ivan Maluski, statewide grassroots organizer for the Sierra Club of Oregon. "These are very elusive, nocturnal animals."

Now those groups are even angrier after Gov. Ted Kulongoski at the end of the 2007 Legislature signed House Bill 2971, a measure being implemented to let ODFW deputize hunters as agents who can use hounds to hunt cougars.

They say the bill is an end-run around to the intent of Measure 18, which voters approved in 1994 to ban the use of dogs in cougar hunts, with an exception for government agencies.

And enviros are just as ticked that the bill—backed by the Oregon Cattlemen's Association—passed with support from their usual Democratic allies, perhaps looking to shore up their rural bona fides. The bill passed the House 39-19, with seven Democrats supporting it. And it passed the Senate 19-8 with eight Democrats backing it.

"Legislators had a deaf ear to us," says Sierra Club state wildlife chair Sally Mackler. "The decision had to do with political persuasions."

ODFW Wildlife Division administrator Ron Anglin counters that dogs are the most efficient and humane way to hunt cougars because hunters can tree the cougar for a quick, fatal shot, if needed.

The ODFW estimates Oregon's cougar population at 5,100—70 percent more than what it considers a desirable population of about 3,000.

In 1987, at the Legislature's request, ODFW developed the cougar management plan, which has been updated twice, most recently in 2005.

There have been plenty of disputes between ODFW and environmental groups over the science behind the population numbers and the particulars of the management plan—specifically about locating and tracking the cougars and whether complaints that trigger killing the animals are properly verified by ODFW. In fact, a 2006 ODFW Rogue Watershed report noted that department biologists investigated less than 10 percent of complaints about cougars killing livestock.

Democrats who voted for HB 2971 in the 2007 session say they're hoping that letting ODFW select, train and supervise hunters as agents who can use dogs will improve the plan.

"The question before us was not the Cougar Management Plan itself, but how to do a more humane job of implementing it," says Sen. Alan Bates (D-Ashland), who along with Rep. Arnie Roblan (D-Coos Bay) carried the bill in the Legislature.

Kulongoski spokeswoman Anna Richter Taylor says the bill will help ODFW manage the cougar population "with the use of volunteer agents, as specifically allowed under Measure 18."

But the alliance on this issue between ODFW and some D's, including state Sen. Brad Avakian (D-Northwest Portland) and Senate Majority Leader Kate Brown (D-East Portland), infuriates Noah Greenwald, a conservation biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity in Portland. Greenwald says claims of rapidly increasing cougar population used to justify HB 2971 could just as easily be based on "more people in the animal's habitat."

Says Greenwald: "There's no way to know."