Can you coexist with mountain lions?

MENDOCINO CO., 11/29/24 — When graduate student Christi Nash joined forces with the nonprofit advocacy group Mountain Lion Foundation to conduct a survey of attitudes towards coexistence with the big cats, she predicted that youth and young adults with higher education levels would skew towards positive attitudes. What she found was that there is no correlation between age and education. Most respondents were over age 40 and most had at least some college education. (A well-known problem with surveys on any topic is that older, educated people are more likely to fill out surveys.)

She received 394 responses. A vast majority, 245 respondents or 62.2%, strongly agreed that coexistence is desirable, while 23.4% somewhat agreed. 

A chief aim of the survey was to gauge responses from agricultural educators, and Nash sent the survey to many agricultural schools in Northern California as well as to community colleges and technical schools with ag departments. Professors responded, noting that 74% taught no curriculum on wildlife and laws regarding conflicts with wildlife, though over half said they would be willing to teach on the topic. Meanwhile, 64% of farmers, ranchers and homesteaders were open to education on coexistence and the laws surrounding interactions with wildlife. Educators were agreeable to teaching students about wildlife and nature while agricultural producers were more interested in hands-on guidance on fencing, housing and deterrents meant to keep livestock safe.

Only 12% of respondents were familiar with the Mountain Lion Foundation, which performs advocacy work for open space and nonlethal predator control for ranchers and homeowners. A valuable part of the foundation’s work is to perform kill site investigations to determine which predator was responsible for a livestock death (often lions are blamed for what turns out to be dogs or coyotes).

A word cloud test was part of the survey. These are words that come up when one thinks of a particular topic, and the number of times a word is mentioned indicates that word is more top-of-mind than another. For example, the word cloud results from farmers and ranchers indicated that the protection of farm animals and pets resonated more strongly than environmental benefits of lions (such as keystone species, for example). Words such as property, pets, goats, chickens, kill, and need came up most frequently, while word clouds for teachers emphasized wildlife, nature, coexist, and conflict.

In conclusion, Nash writes, “Mountain lions are a keystone species in diverse ecosystems that provide many ecological and economic benefits to humans. Therefore, sharing non-lethal methods of livestock protection with farmers and ranchers, as well as educating school children and rural adults on coexistence with this species are for the good of all concerned…. I recommend creating curriculum for high school and agricultural college students to distribute to interested teachers, as well as offering hands-on workshops to help farmers and ranchers protect their property and animals.”

Nash is now turning her attention to creating that sort of curriculum about deterrents, housing, and fencing as well as laws surrounding interactions with wildlife.