Mountain lions play a critical role in maintaining a healthy natural ecosystem in every landscape they inhabit, but their continued presence in those landscapes is often tenuous.
Our Living with Lions webinar series highlights the challenges mountain lions face in existing in a human-dominated world, as well as the steps that we can take to preserve their presence here.
Interested in hearing the latest developments in mountain lion research? Want to be a more effective advocate for wildlife? These webinars are for you!
Registration is open now for these webinars:
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Improving Mountain Lion Deterrents with Machine Learning
Wednesday, January 15 at 12pm PT via Zoom
Aditya Viswanathan (center back) is one of eight members of the Pajarito Environmental Education Center (PEEC) Nature Youth Group in Los Alamos, New Mexico. This group of incredible sophomore high school students developed PumaGuard, a machine learning application that detects and identifies, with 99% accuracy, mountain lions on trail cameras. When a puma is detected on camera, PumaGuard automatically triggers multiple deterrent methods to keep both livestock and lion safe. PumaGuard won the team a prestigious prize for their innovative and socially impactful Artificial Intelligence project in the high school track of NeurIPS, the world-renowned AI conference.
In October, Aditya was featured as a speaker at the International Wildlife Coexistence Conference. In December, he is traveling to Vancouver, Canada to present PumaGuard and receive the NeurIPS award for his team. We are lucky to have him as our January Living with Lions Webinar guest to talk about how he, his team, and his fellow young adults are creatively and proactively protecting wildlife for their generation and beyond.
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Stay tuned, as each month we will dive in deep with scientists, journalists, authors, policymakers and more. Unless otherwise noted, all talks will take place at noon Pacific time, via Zoom. Registration is free and required in order to receive the link.
All events are free to attend, with donations to support our efforts welcome. This community has contributed well over $10,000 toward mountain lion protection efforts through these webinars since their launch in 2021. It’s inspiring to see so many people not only making time in their lives for mountain lions, but also giving generously to support recovery and co-existence efforts.
Watch our most recent webinar:
Onward in 2025, for the Lions!
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