Prowl: On the Trail of the Mountain Lion

Curious, stealthy, and enigmatic, mountain lions are the native big cat of the Americas. Originally ranging from the brow of Canada to the bottom of Argentina, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, today these predators are mostly familiar to us from headlines about attacks on mountain bikers, joggers, and hikers. But after the hunting of these elusive felines was regulated half a century ago, their population began rebounding in the American West, and now they are exploring the rest of their ancestral lands. In 2011, a fully grown male was killed on a Connecticut turnpike within sixty miles of Manhattan, and the cat’s DNA was tracked back to South Dakota. Verified sightings of kittens have been reported in Michigan, Oklahoma, and Minnesota, places where the species hasn’t reproduced in a century. They are coming. The question is, can we learn to live with them again?

In Prowl, acclaimed wilderness author Craig Childs draws on his decades-long experience living off the grid in western Colorado, as well as on conversations with biologists, trackers, cat-hunters, and wildlife photographers, to usher readers into the secret world of the mountain lion. This controversial creature, he reveals, is a biological linchpin, influencing the ecosystems it inhabits in surprising and unexpected ways, from directing animal herds to shaping how trees and mushrooms grow. The cat’s avoidance of humans, moreover, is one of its defining features, and violent encounters—indeed, any encounters at all—are strikingly rare; a person is far more likely to be killed by a domestic cow than by a mountain lion.  Fear of these creatures is warranted, Childs acknowledges—but even more essential is respect.

Trailing these cats across his home territory in the West and across five seasons, matching their steps with his own, Childs offers an intimate, unsparing look at what we’re seeing in the mountain lion’s return—and what we aren’t.