🦁 Your Wild Neighbors Are Watching
The largest wild cats in the Bay Area are closer than you think—and they've been here all along.
The largest wild cats in the Bay Area are closer than you think—and they've been here all along.
Meet Your Neighbors
They don't need trails. They slip through the fog-draped hills of Marin, cross the moonlit ridgelines of Mount Diablo, and pad silently through the redwood shadows of Santa Cruz. Mountain lions—California's apex predators—call the San Francisco Bay Area home. And while most residents will never see one, these magnificent cats see us all the time.
Fun Fact: Mountain lions hold the Guinness record for most names of any animal—over 40 in English alone! They're also called pumas, cougars, catamounts, panthers, and painters.
Adult males can stretch seven feet from nose to tail and weigh over 180 pounds. They're ambush hunters, patient and precise, playing a crucial role in keeping deer populations healthy and our ecosystems in balance.
An estimated 4,000 to 6,000 mountain lions roam California, and they've never left the Bay Area. While cities grew and highways multiplied, these secretive cats adapted. They learned to move at night, to navigate the spaces between our neighborhoods, to be ghosts in plain sight.
They're not visitors—they're residents.
Where They Roam
Mountain lions don't recognize county lines. Their territories span ridges and valleys across the entire Bay Area, connecting wild spaces that might look isolated on a map but function as one vast landscape for these wide-ranging cats.
In Marin, Sonoma, and Napa counties, mountain lions navigate a patchwork of vineyards, oak woodlands, and coastal ridges. Key habitats include Jack London State Park, Sugarloaf Ridge, and Taylor Mountain Regional Park. The True Wild research team has tracked cats here since 2016, revealing how lions weave through this fragmented landscape—sometimes passing remarkably close to homes and wineries under cover of darkness.
The Santa Cruz Mountains harbor one of the Bay Area's most studied mountain lion populations. UC Santa Cruz researchers have tracked cats here since 2008, following individuals whose home ranges span from Big Basin's ancient redwoods to Wilder Ranch's coastal bluffs. These are cats that live in the shadow of Silicon Valley, proof that wildness persists even next door to tech campuses.
Mount Diablo and the surrounding East Bay hills provide crucial habitat, with lions ranging through Las Trampas, Morgan Territory, and Sunol Regional Wilderness. Connectivity research here focuses on ensuring cats can move between these protected areas despite the highways and development that separate them.
For mountain lions, roads are barriers as real as walls. Highway 17, Highway 101, and Highway 12 all cut through critical habitat, turning contiguous wilderness into isolated islands. Wildlife crossings—specialized bridges and underpasses—are in the planning stages, offering hope that future generations of cats will move more safely across our fragmented landscape.
Stay Safe, Stay Aware
Good news! Mountain lion encounters are extremely rare. In the last 100+ years, there have been only 27 confirmed fatal attacks in all of North America. You're far more likely to be injured driving to a trailhead than by a lion on the trail.
These cats are masters of avoidance—they know where you are long before you know they exist. That said, as we continue to build into lion habitat, understanding how to coexist matters more than ever.
Stay calm. Stay big. Stay facing them.
If you live near open space:
🆘 North Bay Predator Hotline
For mountain lion concerns, livestock losses, or encounter reports:
📞 707-721-6560
The Scientists
Understanding mountain lions requires getting close—which is no small feat with an animal this elusive. Fortunately, dedicated research teams across the Bay Area are using GPS collars, camera traps, and genetic analysis to reveal the secret lives of our local cats.
Led by Dr. Chris Wilmers, this groundbreaking project tracks mountain lions across the Santa Cruz, Gabilan, Santa Lucia, and Diablo Mountain ranges. Their real-time "Puma Tracker" lets the public follow GPS-collared cats as they move through the landscape.
🔗 santacruzpumas.orgDr. Quinton Martins and the True Wild team focus on the unique challenges of the North Bay's fragmented habitat. Working across Marin, Napa, Sonoma, Lake, and Mendocino counties, they study how lions navigate vineyards, ranches, and rural communities.
🔗 truewild.orgThis project focuses specifically on connectivity in the East Bay's Diablo Range, studying how lions move between Mount Diablo and surrounding wilderness areas.
🔗 felidaefund.orgThis collaborative effort tests non-lethal deterrent methods, working to find solutions that protect both livestock and lions across San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz counties.
Stories from the Field
Behind the data points are individual animals with personalities, histories, and sometimes heartbreaking stories. Here are a few of the cats whose lives have taught us the most about sharing the Bay Area with mountain lions.
Perhaps no image better captures the wild-urban interface than a young male mountain lion standing on a Marin headland, looking out at the Golden Gate Bridge. Tracked by the Living with Lions project, P36 traveled south from Sonoma County through Marin's coastal hills until he reached the bluffs overlooking the iconic span. Researchers watched via GPS as he paused there—apparently considering his options—before turning back. The South Bay, it seems, wasn't for him.
The matriarch. The first cat collared by the Living with Lions team, P1 lived to approximately 15 years old—ancient for a wild mountain lion. A necropsy after her death revealed she had been shot multiple times during her life. Despite these injuries, she survived for years, a testament to these animals' resilience.
Daughter of P12 and one of five cubs raised to dispersal age, P33 represents hope for the future. She has successfully raised two litters of kittens in the fragmented North Bay habitat, demonstrating that reproduction can continue even in challenging landscapes—if we give lions enough space.
His home range included the UC Santa Cruz campus, extending nearly to Big Basin. Once, researchers documented a kill he made within view of campus buildings. Students and faculty walked to class mere hundreds of yards from where a mountain lion was feeding. Most never knew. That's how these cats prefer it.
A 132-pound male, approximately nine years old, captured west of Cazadero. At his size and age, Khan represents a dominant territorial male—the kind of cat that shapes the social structure of an entire region's lion population.
In the Wild
All photos are Creative Commons licensed or public domain. Click for full size.
