Mountain Lion

Distribution

Reproduction

Ecology

Management

Literature Cited

Distribution

Mountain lions range from coast to coast in North America, and from northern British Columbia to southern Chile and Argentina (Young and Goldman 1946).  Due to the ever-growing human population and habitat fragmentation, hunting pressure, and changes in land management practices, the mountain lion’s domain has shrunk (Beier and Cunningham 1996).  In North America, mountain lion territory is now restricted to remote mountainous regions of the western U.S., western Canada, Mexico, and a few isolated populations in Florida (Figure 1) (Currier 1983).  In Texas, the mountain lion can be found in the Trans-Pecos, the Hill Country, and isolated populations in south Texas (Davis and Schmidly 1994).