Mountain lions, myths, and media: a critical reevaluation of The Beast in the Garden.

• Author: Keefover-Ring, Wendy J.

In 2003, David Baron wrote a controversial book entitled The Beast in the Garden: A Modern Parable of Man and Nature. The Beast in the Garden describes attempts by residents of Boulder, Colorado to coexist with a recovering mountain lion population. As the predators settled into neighborhoods and threatened pets, the animals' presence turned ominous, provoking political battles and culminating in a fatal mountain lion attack on 18-year old Scott Lancaster in Idaho Springs, Colorado. In Mountain Lions, Myths, and Media: A Critical Reevaluation of The Beast in the Garden, Wendy Keefover-Ring, director of the carnivore protection program at Sinapu, criticizes Baron's book as containing serious analytical, historical, and scientific errors and inadequacies. Additionally, she believes the death of a mountain biker in southern California propelled The Beast in the Garden into the media, creating the perception that Baron is a mountain lion expert. Keefover-Ring argues Baron's book unnecessarily frightened the public and succeeded in reinforcing or even changing people's perceptions of predators. Baron then defends The Beast in the Garden, arguing KeefoverRing misunderstood the theme of his book: that humans are dangerous when they do not appreciate their impact on the natural world Baron then attempts to rebut Keefover-Ring's assertions and accuses her of politicizing The Beast in the Garden. In Final Words About Beasts and Gardens, Keefover-Ring attempts to undermine Baron's rebuttal and argues that Baron failed to prove a Boulder-based lion killed Scott Lancaster, thereby undermining his central thesis.

MOUNTAIN LIONS, MYTHS, AND MEDIA: A CRITICAL REEVALUATION OF THE BEAST IN THE GARDEN

BY WENDY J. KEEFOVER-RING *

David Baron's The Beast in the Garden: A Modern Parable of Man and Nature (Beast in the Garden) (1)--re-released into paperback by W.W. Norton--provides a well-intentioned attempt to warn us Westerners about the potential dangers of recreating or living in mountain lion country. The book's sloppy methodology, unsatisfying leaps in logic, historical inventions, and reliance on anecdotal "scientific" data create problems for itself. Yet, its authoritative tone and lengthy bibliography have convinced the media, many readers, and even some academics that Baron, a twenty-year National Public Radio reporter, is also an expert on mountain lions. (2)

According to the book's website, Baron has been interviewed on at least nineteen radio shows and three television stations, quoted in twenty-four newspapers or magazines, and his book was excerpted in several publications--including nine versions of Reader's Digest. (3) On top of that, the book has been favorably reviewed sixty-four times. (4) Beast in the Garden, with its alarmist style and emphasis on gore, appears to have, at least temporarily, modified the public discourse on mountain lions. For example, in April 2004, a Colorado news station reported, "Experts Fear Mountain Lion Confrontations Will Rise." (5) The expert interviewed on this subject is invariably journalist David Baron.

Has the book changed people's understanding of large native carnivores in the ecosystem? After the release of Beast in the Garden in October 2003, wildlife biologists and others have witnessed a shift in main-stream attitudes towards mountain lions--something akin to the predator angst the dominant American culture exhibited at the turn of the nineteenth century. Beast in the Garden, to use Baron's words, is "prone to weave elaborate stories from cryptic evidence .... " (6)

Baron argues that Boulder, Colorado's hippie-bred, herbal-tea-drinking, animal-venerating, nature-loving culture led to a mountain lion attack on a young man in Idaho Springs. (7) He claims that the 1991 death of Scott Lancaster, an eighteen-year old Idaho Springs resident, was the "inevitable" outcome following the confluence of political, historical, and ecological events that had "gone awry." (8) Wildlife lovers on Boulder's rural-urban interface lured deer into their unhunted "gardens," according to Baron. (9) The "increasing" deer population attracted mountain lions (the "beast") closer to human habitants. He argues that close proximity to humans created habituated wild cats. (10) In other words, Baron argues that Boulder's culture of animal and nature reverence killed Lancaster. By examining historical, scientific, and other sources uncritically, Baron steps into a trap of his own making.

The fundamental underpinnings of Beast in the Garden are easily contested. Baron's argument that a Boulder-based, human-habituated lion killed a boy in Idaho Springs has three important problems. First, in that rural burg, animal veneration has a different meaning. Bambi is venison, and the Lion King is an ornamental rug. People who live in Idaho Springs hunt large mammals, including mountain lions. In other words, Idaho Springs, the place where the attack occurred--the basis of the book--is the cultural antithesis of Boulder). (11) Yet this fact is conveniently left out of Beast in the Garden, to include it would have undercut Baron's main thesis.

A second fundamental problem is that Idaho Springs lies twenty air miles--over mountainous terrain--away from Boulder, and although a large male tom will have a territory of at least one hundred square miles, those miles are not linear. California-based lion biologist, Dr. Rick Hopkins, explains that a forty-mile radius is equivalent to 5,000 square miles--thus, it is unlikely that a lion living in Boulder also has a territory connected to Idaho Springs. (12) On the other hand, Dr. Ken Logan, a puma biologist, writes that if a subadult animal was dispersing from its natal area in search of its own home range, that animal could have originated "from anywhere in Colorado, or as far away as New Mexico or Wyoming." (13)

Moreover, the contention that lions will inevitably attack humans or become habituated to them is disputed by a well-respected 2003 San Diego, California study conducted by Linda Sweanor et al. that finds lions typically try to avoid human encounters. (14) Indeed, Baron cites no scientific evidence to support his theory that lions routinely adjust to humans.

Attributing human characteristics to wildlife and using unsound ethical reasoning further compound the book's flaws. According to Baron, mountain lions use ritualized murder no different than the Aztecs who "hauled prisoners up high pyramids and cut out their beating hearts as an offering to the sun...." (15) The lion that killed Scott Lancaster "hollow[ed him] out" "like a pumpkin" and then "sprinkled [the body with] moss and twigs" "as if to signify something profound." (16) Using "surgical" precision, (17) a lion "killed a young man and ate his heart." (18) Although such dramatic words keep the reader turning the pages, they are problematic.

In Beast in the Garden, Baron disguises mountain lions as human beings--a literary trick with ignominious precedent. In 1903, renowned naturalist John Burroughs excoriated nature writers who had published farfetched stories about animal behavior. In his essay, "Real and Sham Natural History," (19) Burroughs attacked these "nature faker" writers and ignited a debate in the literary world. Burroughs' critique proves instructive one hundred years later. He fumed that these nature fakers put "much sentiment" into their works to achieve "literary effects." (20)

Baron's pumas-as-Aztec-priests or knife-wielding-surgeons makes interesting reading and taps into people's primal fears about large predators. Apparently this tactic has worked since he has achieved enough interest to generate a second printing of his book, and he continues to receive glowing reviews and interviews; however, his style may spawn a...