Mountain Lion Foundation

Keeping Cougars and You Out of Trouble

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As the summer season brings out hikers and campers, it's time for a quick review of the basics of cougar safety.

Know where lions live.  Watch for signs and trail postings.  When possible, avoid lion habitat when deer are active, often dawn and dusk.  Travel in pairs.  Keep your children and pets within arms reach.

If you do see a cougar, no matter how thrilled you are to be one of the very few who gets such an opportunity, don't approach the cougar.  The cougar will not care that you have worked to save it.  Most cougars want to avoid humans.  Give a cougar the time and space to steer clear of you.

Never run past or from a cougar.  This may trigger their instinct to chase.  Never bend over or crouch down.  This may make you look too much like a four-legged prey animal.  The whole idea here is to look as little like lunch as possible.

Predators, like the cougar, cannot afford injury.  If they are injured they cannot go into the office in the morning and earn a living.  When that happens, they starve.  So they are less interested in anything that looks like it will fight back.  You need to explain this to the cougar in a language it understands.

So, act like a predator yourself.  Stand your ground.  Maintain eye contact.  Aggressively wave your raised arms, throw stones, branches, without turning away.  Speak loudly and firmly.  Move slowly to a spot that gives the cougar room to get away.

Make yourself appear larger by picking up your children or standing next to other adults.  Open your jacket.

People have utilized rocks, jackets, garden tools, tree branches, walking sticks, fanny packs and even bare hands to turn away cougars.

In one case a 9-year-old boy in El Dorado County frightened a mountain lion away by playing his trumpet.  When asked why he did that he said, "...my parents taught me to make noise, look big, do not run..."

Four ways you can help:

Donate Join MLF Volunteer Cougar Clippings