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Several years ago before I made the switch to HD and started Silver Phoenix, I had a production company called Pawprint Productions. At the time there were quite a few stories about mountain lion sightings in Iowa.
Usually every TV news story or newspaper article ended with a bunch of people wanting to go out and kill it. Pretty soon it seemed like everyone was spotting mountain lions. There were even rumors that the Department of Natural Resources were using Blackhawk Black-Ops helicopters under the cover of night to establish a breeding population to control the exploding deer population.
It saddened me that Iowans wouldn’t even give mountain lions a chance. You’re more likely to die from a whitetail deer than you ever would from a mountain lion. Even today, they are shot on sight. Yet other predators like bears that come down from Wisconsin and Minnesota are protected by Iowa law. So why do mountain lions have no protection but a bear, which can kill you just as easily, has full protection?
So, I decided to put together this film. If people would take the time to educated themselves instead of living in ignorance, they would find that it is not very difficult to live alongside nature.
Baba Dioum said, In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we have been taught.
Do we have no time to learn about the mountain lion?
[flv:http://www.silverphoenixllc.com/phoenixblog/movies/GATC3.flv 592 331]
About Kevin J Railsabck
I enjoyed your film “Ghosts Among the Corn.” I was saddened by the news of the recent shooting of a mountain lion in Iowa. My wife and I camped in Caspers Wilderness Park in San Juan Capistrano, California for nearly 20 years. It’s an area known to have mountain lions, but we were never privileged to see one. Artist, writer, and Ioway tribal member Lance Foster says Iowa is the territory in the union most altered from its original natural state. Wouldn’t it be great if other species native to Iowa were to return? As one of your interviewees inferred, we need to regain our sense of nature. As stewards of the earth, I hope we will strive to live in ways which are not governed by our fears, and instead choose to live in harmony with the wonderful natural world that surrounds us.