Mountain Lion Foundation

The Mountain Lion Foundation has a vision of a world where lions and people coexist, where sustainability includes the persistence of the human ecosystem in harmony with viable wildlife communities, and where wildlands are nurtured and not subdued.

America’s Lion is a marvel of adaptation, descending from Asian felids of 11 million years ago. For millennia, Puma concolor inhabited forests, deserts, mountains, islands and bottomlands of the New World’s two massive continents. Our vision is that the ecological miscues of the Anthropocene Age abate, allowing restoration of lions throughout these diverse habitats.

Our vision requires humans to respect and trust, not fear, lions in proximity.

We live in a time of climate stress, a fearsome pace of extinctions, and a planetary crisis. If humankind can reverse the lion’s decline, there is hope.

Mountain lions are a keystone species indispensable to ecological communities. Although development has compromised lions’ range throughout the Americas, given protection, including restoration of habitat, lions will thrive. We work with, individuals, communities, scientists, legislators and other conservation groups to mitigate and end the persecution of mountain lions and the destruction of their habitat.

Communication – The Mountain Lion Foundation strives for consensus that lions deserve protection. We ensure the continued existence of lions and the wild places on which they rely by securing their protection through education, outreach, and advocacy.

Science – The Mountain Lion Foundation formulates conservation policy and programs to benefit lions and lion habitat while maintaining an independent and mutually beneficial relationship with the research and scientific communities.

Corridors – Lions require corridors to move about their territories and for their young to disperse. Because development has fragmented lion habitat, we support protecting critical habitat, corridors and freeway crossings for lions and other wildlife.

Coexistence – We promote effective preventative measures to resolve perceived human-lion conflicts. We urge the public and relevant agencies to fully appreciate lions as a vital and indispensable apex species deserving preservation rather than exploitation.

For 35 years the Mountain Lion Foundation has been working with individuals, communities, state agencies and legislators. We have supporters in every state in America and a healthy volunteer base supported by a strong staff, talented attorneys and lobbyists in multiple states that challenge the status quo and educate people on the importance of coexisting with healthy populations of mountain lions.

In California the Foundation ended the hunting of mounting lions in 1990. In 2020 a CA state wide three step policy was developed that places the responsibility of protecting pets and livestock on the person not on the lion. In 2019 the Foundation petitioned for the mountain lions in Southern and central coast areas of California to be listed as endangered. The ruling for this petition will be completed in early 2022.

In other states from Washington, to Wyoming and from Oregon to Arizona, Colorado and Texas we have supported legislation that ends hunting contests, stops trapping and the over hunting of mountain lions, ending the use of deadly rodenticides all while protecting other wildlife in the process.

Volunteers and staff teaching a variety of educational programs have taught hundreds of small ranchers and homeowners how to coexist with mountain lions.